ICESat-2: Global Satellite Laser Altimetry Data for Earth Surface and Atmosphere

NASA's ICESat-2 project provides Level 1B telemetry and derived geophysical data products from the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS). The dataset includes multiple products such as ATL03 for geolocated photon heights, ATL04 for atmospheric backscatter profiles, ATL13 for inland water surface heights, and ATL24 for coastal bathymetry. Data is hosted on AWS Open Data under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Modeling ice sheet elevation change and mass balance based on photon height data.
• Analyzing atmospheric aerosol and cloud properties based on normalized relative backscatter profiles.
• Monitoring inland water body levels and dynamics based on surface water height statistics.
• Mapping coastal and nearshore seafloor topography based on refraction-corrected bathymetry data.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, a dedicated Earth observation mission.
• Includes multiple derived geophysical products (ATL03, ATL04, ATL13, ATL24) for different science domains.
• Released under a 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

NASA ICESat-2 mission, Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS).

Collection Method

Satellite laser altimetry measurements processed by the ICESat-2 Science Investigator-led Processing System (SIPS).

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Global coverage.