Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/ATL09
ATL09·v007·dataset

Laser profiles of clouds and haze layers (ICESat-2)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Calibrated Backscatter Profiles and Atmospheric Layer Characteristics V006
atmosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. These are vertical profiles of clouds, haze, and airborne particles, showing how much of a laser pulse bounces back from each layer of the atmosphere. They also flag features like blowing snow and report the heights of cloud and aerosol layers.

How it's made. Derived from the ATLAS laser instrument aboard NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, the raw laser returns are calibrated and processed into atmospheric layer measurements.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying clouds, haze, and blowing snow over the poles, and for understanding how the atmosphere affects ICESat-2's main job of measuring ice and land elevation.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIESSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › LIDAR › LIDAR BACKSCATTER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-10-13 → ongoing
  • Measured byICESat-2 (ATLAS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -88, 180, 88
  • FormatsHDF5
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

ATL09 contains calibrated, attenuated backscatter profiles (CAB), layer-integrated attenuated backscatter, blowing snow, and other parameters including cloud and aerosol layer height and atmospheric characteristics. The data were acquired by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board the ICESat-2 observatory.

Get the data

atl09_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL09",
    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.