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Full catalog/ATL14
ATL14·v004·dataset

How tall polar land ice is, on a grid (ICESat-2)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3B Gridded Antarctic and Arctic Land Ice Height V004
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. A gridded elevation map showing how tall the land ice surface is across Antarctica and Arctic regions, at 100-meter detail.

How it's made. Derived from laser height measurements by NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, built up from its repeat-track ice-height time series into a smooth gridded model.

How & where you'd use it. Used to set up ice sheet models, provide boundaries for atmospheric models, and help correct other satellite data like imagery and radar.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › GLACIER ELEVATION/ICE SHEET ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-01-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byICESat-2 (ATLAS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -60
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • 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

This data set contains a high-resolution (100 m) gridded digital elevation model (DEM) for the Antarctic ice sheet and regions around the Arctic. The data can be used to initialize ice sheet models, as boundary conditions for atmospheric models, or to help with the reduction of other satellite data such as optical imagery or synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The data are derived from the ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3B Slope-Corrected Land Ice Height Time Series product (ATL11).

Get the data

atl14_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL14",
    version="004",
    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.