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Full catalog/ATL07QL
ATL07QL·v007·dataset

How high sea ice rides above the water (ICESat-2, quick-look)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Sea Ice Height Quick Look V007
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. How high the sea ice surface and the open sea surface sit, measured along the satellite's track, so you can see how much ice rides above the water.

How it's made. A fast 'quick-look' version made from the ATLAS laser altimeter on ICESat-2, using the same methods as the final product but released early; it's deleted once the final files are ready.

How & where you'd use it. Gives an early read on sea ice conditions for users who need timely data; for archival work the final ATL07 product is preferred.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2025-12-15 → 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

ATL07QL is the quick look version of ATL07 and is based on the same algorithms that generate the ATL07 final data products. Once final ATL07 files are available, the corresponding ATL07QL files are removed. 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

atl07ql_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL07QL",
    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.