Ice-sheet surface height by laser (ICESat-2, v6)

In plain English

What it measures. The height of land-ice surfaces such as glaciers and ice sheets above a standard reference shape of the Earth, with extra parameters to judge each measurement's quality.

How it's made. Measured by the ATLAS laser instrument on NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, which times laser pulses reflecting off the ice; this is version 6 of the processed land-ice heights.

How & where you'd use it. Used to monitor whether ice sheets and glaciers are gaining or losing height over time, an important indicator for sea-level rise and climate.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › GLACIER ELEVATION/ICE SHEET ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

Time span2018-10-14 → ongoing
Measured byICESat-2 (ATLAS)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-180, -88, 180, 88
FormatsHDF5
StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

Measure sea ice, snow cover and glaciers
Watch ice-sheet elevation change
Track freeze/thaw and permafrost

Official description

ATL06 contains geolocated land-ice surface heights above the WGS84 ellipsoid, plus ancillary parameters that can be used to interpret and assess the quality of the height estimates. The data were acquired by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board the ICESat-2 observatory.

Get the data

atl06_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL06",
    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