This dataset contains ice phenology for 56 lakes in the Northern Hemisphere from 1979 to 2019. The ice phenology was extracted from 3.125 km 37 GHz H-polarized evening brightness temperature data from Scanning Multi-channel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), Special Sensor Microwave Image (SSM/I) and Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) data in the Calibrated Enhanced Resolution Brightness Temperature (CETB) dataset. According to the differences in the brightness temperature between lake ice and open water, a threshold algorithm based on Moving t test method was applied to determine the lake ice status for the pixels 6.25 km away from the lake shore, and the ice phenology dates for each lake were then extracted. For the overlapping lake ice phenology results extracted from multiple satellite, the results from the satellite with the highest utilization were prioritized. The lake ice phenology dataset provides valuable information about the changes in the lakes with seasonal ice cover in the past four decades.