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Full catalog/ATL22
ATL22·v004·dataset

Heights of lakes and rivers from a laser (ICESat-2)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3B Mean Inland Surface Water Data V004
hydrosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. The average height of the water surface for stretches of inland lakes and rivers, along with how much that height varied and a measure of how the laser light faded in the water.

How it's made. Calculated from the ICESat-2 satellite's laser altimeter measurements, by averaging along each water-body transect; it builds on the satellite's along-track inland water product.

How & where you'd use it. Lets researchers monitor lake and river levels and how they change over time, useful for water-resource and hydrology studies.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-10-14 → 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

ATL22 includes the per-beam mean surface water height, mean surface height standard deviation, and mean ATLAS 532 nm attenuation coefficient over a water body transect, reported at the center of the beam transect. Additional parameters include the beginning and end of the transect, transect length, and center of transect. ATL22 is derived from ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Along Track Inland Surface Water Data (ATL13).

Get the data

atl22_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL22",
    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.