Nearly complete mosaics of winter ice surface velocities for the 1990's over the Eastern Arctic (Novaya Zemlya, Franz-Josef-Land, Severnaya Zemlya and Svalbard) were compiled based on historical SAR data. Offset-tracking to JERS-1 SAR data of the time period 1992-1998 was mainly applied. Data gaps were complemented using SAR interferometry and offset-tracking of ERS-1/2 SAR data of the time period 1991-1997. Knowledge on ice surface velocity of glaciers and ice caps contributes to a better understanding of a wide range of processes related to glacier dynamics, mass change and response to climate. In order to study long-term variability of winter ice surface velocity from the 1990's to present, velocity maps computed with offset-tracking from 2008-2011 ALOS-1 PALSAR-1 and 2020-2021 Sentinel-1 data are also provided.

Two sets of data containing historical ice surface velocities over the Eastern Arctic (Novaya Zemlya, Franz-Josef-Land, Severnaya Zemlya and Svalbard) are provided.The velocities derived from offset-tracking of JERS-1 (1992-1998), ERS-1/2 (1991-2010) and ALOS-1 PALSAR-1 (2006-2011) data are available in vector format with metadata information for single image tracks. A comma-separated values (csv) file provides the northing and easting coordinates of measurement points, the elevation, the displacement in metres in the x, y and z directions, and the cross-correlation coefficient for each measurement. A metadata file in xml format provides information about the SAR images used, the processing parameters and quality aspects of the data such as the percent of valid information over ice and statistical measures over ice-free regions. In addition, for each image pair geotiff's of the three-dimensional ice surface displacement maps, the two intensity images, the differential interferogram, the phase coherence image, an RGB color composite of the coherence, intensity and intensity difference between both images, and the layover and shadow map are available.Mosaics of ice velocities from various sensors and time intervals are available in GeoTIFF format. This includes offset-tracking mosaics computed from the best winter JERS-1, ERS-1 and ALOS-1 PALSAR-1 image pairs, ERS-1/2 InSAR ice velocity maps of Nordaustlandet (Svalbard), South Svalbard and North-West Svalbard, and Sentinel-1 offset-tracking mosaics computed from winter 2020/2021 data.