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Full catalog/GLAH14
GLAH14·v034·dataset

Laser-measured land surface height (ICESat)

GLAS/ICESat L2 Global Land Surface Altimetry Data (HDF5) V034
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 2 HDF
In plain English

What it measures. Laser-measured surface heights specifically over land, plus the laser footprint location, surface reflectance, and the various corrections applied to the range measurements.

How it's made. Produced from the GLAS laser altimeter on the original ICESat satellite, combining lower-level products and applying algorithms tailored specifically to land surfaces.

How & where you'd use it. Used for studying land surface elevation and topography; it is one of a family of ICESat products that separately cover ice sheets, sea ice, land, and oceans.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › REFLECTANCELAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION

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

  • Measure sea ice, snow cover and glaciers
  • Watch ice-sheet elevation change
  • Track freeze/thaw and permafrost
Official description

GLAH06 is used in conjunction with GLAH05 to create the Level-2 altimetry products. Level-2 altimetry data provide surface elevations for ice sheets (GLAH12), sea ice (GLAH13), land (GLAH14), and oceans (GLAH15). Data also include the laser footprint geolocation and reflectance, as well as geodetic, instrument, and atmospheric corrections for range measurements. The Level-2 elevation products, are regional products archived at 14 orbits per granule, starting and stopping at the same demarcation (± 50° latitude) as GLAH05 and GLAH06. Each regional product is processed with algorithms specific to that surface type. Surface type masks define which data are written to each of the products. If any data within a given record fall within a specific mask, the entire record is written to the product. Masks can overlap: for example, non-land data in the sea ice region may be written to the sea ice and ocean products. This means that an algorithm may write the same data to more than one Level-2 product. In this case, different algorithms calculate the elevations in their respective products. The surface type masks are versioned and archived at NSIDC, so users can tell which data to expect in each product. Each data granule has an associated browse product.

Get the data

glah14_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="GLAH14",
    version="034",
    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.