How much polar ice height is changing (ICESat-2)

In plain English

What it measures. How much the height of polar land ice is changing over time, plus the rate of that change, mapped across Antarctica and around the Arctic at several grid sizes from 1 km to 40 km.

How it's made. Derived from the laser-altimeter height records of NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, built up from its slope-corrected ice-height time series.

How & where you'd use it. Shows where ice sheets and glaciers are thickening or thinning, a direct measure of ice loss and an important input to estimates of future sea level rise.

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, 59, 180, 90
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 land ice height changes and change rates for the Antarctic ice sheet and regions around the Arctic gridded at four spatial resolutions (1 km, 10 km, 20 km, and 40 km). The data are derived from the ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3B Slope-Corrected Land Ice Height Time Series product (ATL11).

Get the data

atl15_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL15",
    version="005",
    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 data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
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
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3B Gridded Antarctic and Arctic Land Ice Height Change, Version 5 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
ATL03/ICESat-2 Data Gaps (applies to all ICESat-2 products) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
ICESat-2 Major Activities (includes yaw flips) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION