Exact laser height points on Earth's surface (ICESat-2, v7)

In plain English

What it measures. This records the height, exact location and time for each individual laser photon bounced off Earth's surface by ICESat-2. It is essentially a dense cloud of precise elevation points along the satellite's track.

How it's made. Generated from the ATLAS laser instrument aboard ICESat-2 as the foundational Level-2 product holding every detected photon plus the supporting information.

How & where you'd use it. Designed as the single source of photon data that all higher-level ICESat-2 products are built from, so most people use it indirectly through products on ice, land, vegetation or water rather than reading the raw photons themselves.

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.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links