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Full catalog/ATL13
ATL13·v007·dataset

Water height of lakes and rivers by laser (ICESat-2, v7)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Along Track Inland Surface Water Data V007
hydrosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. This measures the height of inland water surfaces - lakes, reservoirs, rivers, bays and estuaries - along the satellite's track, plus related details like wave height and water-surface slope. Heights are given relative to both sea level and a global Earth reference.

How it's made. Produced from the ATLAS laser altimeter aboard ICESat-2 as a Level-3 product, processed from the raw laser returns into water-surface measurements along each pass.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking lake and river water levels, monitoring reservoirs and droughts, and studying how inland waters change; it also feeds a follow-on averaged water product.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER FEATURES

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

  • Follow rainfall, floods and surface-water extent
  • Track soil moisture and the onset of drought
  • Monitor lakes, rivers and groundwater storage
Official description

ATL13 provides along-track surface water products for inland water bodies, defined as lakes, reservoirs, bays, estuaries, rivers, and a 7 km near-shore buffer. Data parameters include surface water height statistics and related parameters including significant wave height, transect slope, subsurface signal attenuation, and shallow water bathymetry. Water surface heights are provided as both orthometric height and height referencing the WGS84 ellipsoid. ATL13 is also used to produce the ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3B Mean Inland Surface Water Data product (ATL22).

Get the data

atl13_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL13",
    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.