ATL03: Global Geolocated Photon Data from ICESat-2 Satellite

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L2A data provides height, latitude, longitude, and time for all photons downlinked by the ATLAS instrument on the ICESat-2 observatory. The dataset serves as a single source for photon data and ancillary information needed by higher-level products. It is hosted on AWS Open Data and is licensed under CC-BY-4.0.

Use Cases

• Calculate surface elevation changes for ice sheets and glaciers based on photon height data.
• Map global topography and vegetation canopy height based on geolocated photon returns.
• Analyze cloud and atmospheric layer properties based on the distribution of returned photons.
• Develop and validate higher-level geophysical products that require raw photon data as input.

Strengths

• Data is global in coverage, providing measurements across all Earth's surfaces.
• Includes ancillary spacecraft and instrument parameters beyond the core photon data.
• Licensed under the permissive CC-BY-4.0 license for broad reuse.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2).

Collection Method

Satellite-based laser altimetry downlinking photon data.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Global