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Full catalog/ATL17
ATL17·v006·dataset

Monthly maps of clouds and haze over the poles (ICESat-2)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3B Monthly Gridded Atmosphere V006
atmosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly maps summarizing the atmosphere, including how much of the sky is cloudy, haziness over the oceans, polar cloud cover, how often snow is being blown around, surface reflectivity, and how often the ground is detected.

How it's made. Compiled into monthly global grids from the ATLAS laser instrument aboard the ICESat-2 satellite.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers study clouds, haze, and blowing snow, especially over the polar regions.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL BACKSCATTER › AEROSOL FRACTIONSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › LIDAR › APPARENT SURFACE REFLECTIVITYCRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › BLOWING SNOWATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD FRACTIONATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD MICROPHYSICS › CLOUD OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS

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

This data set contains a gridded summary of monthly global cloud fraction, total column optical depth over the oceans, polar cloud fraction, blowing snow frequency, apparent surface reflectivity, and ground detection frequency.

Get the data

atl17_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL17",
    version="006",
    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.