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Full catalog/ATL07
ATL07·v007·dataset

Sea-ice surface height by laser (ICESat-2, v6)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Sea Ice Height V006
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. The height of the sea-ice surface (and open ocean between ice) measured along the satellite's path, broken into segments down to 10 meters long.

How it's made. Comes from the ATLAS laser altimeter on NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, which measures the elevation of the ice and water surface from the timing of laser pulses returning to the spacecraft.

How & where you'd use it. Used to study sea-ice thickness and how polar ice is changing, supporting climate research and monitoring of the Arctic and Antarctic.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE 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

ATL07 contains along-track sea surface height and sea ice height for segments of variable lengths for all beams as well as fixed 10-meter segments for strong beams. Heights are also computed using the DDA-Bifurcation algorithm for strong beams. The data were acquired by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board the ICESat-2 observatory.

Get the data

atl07_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL07",
    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.