IceBridge ATM: Gridded Arctic Sea Ice Surface Elevation

NASA Operation IceBridge's gridded Surface Elevation product is derived from Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) lidar data collected during annual low-altitude surveys over Arctic sea ice from March 2009 to May 2018. The data are processed into a specialized grid with a 30-meter along-track dimension to optimize the non-uniform sampling density of the conical lidar scanner. This dataset provides high-resolution elevation measurements for studying sea ice topography and change.

Use Cases

• Calculating sea ice freeboard and inferring thickness based on gridded surface elevation measurements.
• Analyzing spatial variability in sea ice topography using the optimized, high-density sampling grid.
• Tracking changes in Arctic sea ice surface elevation over the 2009-2018 annual survey period.
• Validating satellite-derived altimetry measurements over sea ice with airborne lidar data.

Strengths

• Provides a decadal time series of annual measurements from 2009 to 2018.
• Uses a specialized grid (30m along-track) to optimize the high-density sampling of the conical ATM lidar scanner.
• Derived from NASA's authoritative Operation IceBridge airborne survey mission.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, specific license, and author are unavailable across all platforms.
• There is a conflict in dataset freshness: one source lists a last update in 2026, while another lists 2018.
• The complete list of data columns is not provided, limiting precise understanding of the data structure.

Provenance

Source

NASA Operation IceBridge, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Collection Method

Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) lidar data acquired during annual low-altitude surveys, gridded to account for non-uniform sampling density.

Time Range

March 2009 to May 2018

Freshness

2026-03-05 (conflict with 2018-04-16 source)

Geography

Arctic sea ice regions