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read-ICESat-2

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Python tools for obtaining and working with elevation data from the NASA ICESat-2 mission

ICESat-2 Data Products

Product Name Description
ATL00 Telemetry Data Raw ATLAS telemetry in packet format
ATL01 Reformatted Telemetry Parsed, partially reformatted into HDF5, generated daily, segmented into several minute granules
ATL02 Science Unit Converted Telemetry Photon time of flight, corrected for instrument effects. Includes all photons, pointing data, spacecraft position, housekeeping data, engineering data, and raw atmospheric profiles, segmented into several minute granules.
ATL03 Global Geolocated Photon Data Precise latitude, longitude and elevation for every received photon, arranged by beam in the along-track direction. Photons classified by signal vs. background, as well as by surface type (land ice, sea ice, land, ocean), including all geophysical corrections. Segmented into several minute granules.
ATL04 Uncalibrated Backscatter Profiles Along-track atmospheric backscatter data, 25 times per second. Includes calibration coefficients for polar regions. Segmented into several minute granules.
ATL06 Land Ice Elevation Surface height for each beam with along- and across-track slopes calculated for each beam pair. Posted at 40 meters along-track. Segmented into several minute granules.
ATL07 Arctic/Antarctic Sea Ice Elevation Height of sea ice and open water leads at varying length scale based on returned photon rate for each beam presented along-track. Segmented into several minute granules.
ATL08 Land Water Vegetation Elevation Height of ground including canopy surface posted at variable length scales relative to signal level, for each beam presented along-track. Where data permits include canopy height, canopy cover percentage, surface slope and roughness, and apparent reflectance.
ATL09 Calibrated Backscatter and Cloud Characteristics Along-track cloud and other significant atmosphere layer heights, blowing snow, integrated backscatter, and optical depth.
ATL10 Arctic/Antarctic Sea Ice Freeboard Estimate of sea ice freeboard over specific spatial scales using all available sea surface height measurements. Contains statistics of sea surface and sea ice heights.
ATL11 Antarctic/Greenland Ice Sheet H(t) Series Time series of height at points on the ice sheet, calculated based on repeat tracks and/or cross-overs.
ATL12 Ocean Elevation Surface height at specific length scale.
ATL13 Inland Water Height Along-track inland and near shore water surface height distribution within water mask.
ATL14 Antarctic/Greenland Ice Sheet H(t) Gridded Height maps of each ice sheet for each year based on all available elevation data.
ATL15 Antarctic/Greenland Ice Sheet dh/dt Gridded Height change maps for each ice sheet, for each mission year, and for the whole mission.
ATL16 ATLAS Atmosphere Weekly Polar cloud fraction, blowing snow frequency, ground detection frequency.
ATL17 ATLAS Atmosphere Monthly Polar cloud fraction, blowing snow frequency, ground detection frequency.
ATL18 Land/Canopy Gridded Gridded ground surface height, canopy height, and canopy cover estimates.
ATL19 Mean Sea Surface (MSS) Gridded ocean height product.
ATL20 Arctic/Antarctic Gridded Sea Ice Freeboard Gridded sea ice freeboard.
ATL21 Arctic/Antarctic Gridded Sea Surface Height w/in Sea Ice Gridded monthly sea surface height inside the sea ice cover.

ICESat-2 Granules

Each orbit of ICESat-2 data is broken up into 14 granules. The granule boundaries limit the size of each ATL03 file and simplify the formation of higher level data products.

ICESat-2 global granules

ICESat-2 polar granules

Dependencies

Download

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A zip archive of the latest version is available directly at:

Disclaimer

This project contains work and contributions from the scientific community. This program is not sponsored or maintained by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) or NASA. It is provided here for your convenience but with no guarantees whatsoever.

License

The content of this project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Attribution license and the source code is licensed under the MIT license.