Heights of haze layers and the lowest air layer (ICESat)

In plain English

What it measures. The heights of haze and dust layers in the air, and the height of the lowest, most mixed layer of the atmosphere where weather and pollution churn near the ground.

How it's made. Derived from the GLAS laser instrument on the ICESat satellite, which detected aerosol layers from near the surface up to about 41 km.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying air quality, dust storms, and how pollution and weather mix near the ground. A research product for atmospheric scientists.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL PARTICLE PROPERTIESATMOSPHERE › ALTITUDE › PLANETARY BOUNDARY LAYER HEIGHT

Coverage & cadence

Time span2003-02-20 → 2009-10-11
Measured byICESat (ALTIMETERS, CD, GLAS, GPS, GPS Receiver, LA, PC)
Processing levelLevel 2
Spatial extent-180, -86, 180, 86
FormatsHDF
StatusCOMPLETE

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

GLAH08 Level-2 planetary boundary layer (PBL) and elevated aerosol layer heights data contains PBL heights, ground detection heights, and top and bottom heights of elevated aerosols from -1.5 km to 20.5 km (4 sec sampling rate) and from 20.5 km to 41 km (20 sec sampling rate). Each data granule has an associated browse product.

Get the data

glah08_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="GLAH08",
    version="033",
    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 and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. 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 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
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
GLAS/ICESat L2 Global Planetary Boundary Layer and Elevated Aerosol Layer Heights (HDF5), Version 33 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
GLAS Atmospheric Product User Guide - Release 33 VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) Heights over the Great Basin Desert, USA VIEW RELATED INFORMATION