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Full catalog/ATL03
ATL03·v007·dataset

Exact laser height points on Earth's surface (ICESat-2, v6)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L2A Global Geolocated Photon Data V006
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 2A active HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. The exact height, position, and timing of individual laser-light particles (photons) bounced off Earth's surface. It is essentially a precise 3D point record of where the laser hit the ground, ice, or water.

How it's made. Comes from the ATLAS laser altimeter on NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, which fires laser pulses downward and records each returning photon's location and elevation relative to a global reference shape of the Earth.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level building-block product: it is the single source feeding higher-level ICESat-2 products on ice-sheet, sea-ice, vegetation, and water heights, so most people use it through those rather than directly.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-10-13 → ongoing
  • Measured byICESat-2 (ATLAS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2A
  • Spatial extent-180, -88, 180, 88
  • FormatsHDF5
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

ATL03 contains height above the WGS 84 ellipsoid, latitude, longitude, and time for each photon downlinked by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board ICESat-2. This product was designed to be a single source for all photon data and ancillary information needed by higher-level ATLAS/ICESat-2 products.

Get the data

atl03_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL03",
    version="007",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from NSIDC_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.