Cloud and haze layers spotted by laser (ICESat-2)

In plain English

What it measures. Profiles clouds, haze, and blowing snow above the surface, reporting the heights of cloud and aerosol layers and how strongly each layer scatters laser light back.

How it's made. Produced from the ATLAS laser instrument aboard ICESat-2, processed into calibrated backscatter profiles and atmospheric layer characteristics.

How & where you'd use it. Helps study clouds, airborne particles, and blowing snow, and provides atmospheric context for ICESat-2's main job of measuring surface heights.

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.

Official links

Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Calibrated Backscatter Profiles and Atmospheric Layer Characteristics, Version 7 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
ATL09 Known Issues (V07) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
ATL09 Data Dictionary (V07) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION