Laser-measured ice surface heights from a plane (ATM)

In plain English

What it measures. Precise spot measurements of the height of ice surfaces, plus how strongly the laser signal bounced back, over Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

How it's made. Collected by NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper, a laser instrument flown on aircraft (including the DC-8 and P-3B) during Operation IceBridge survey campaigns.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists track changes in ice thickness and surface elevation, bridging gaps between satellite ice-monitoring missions.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › GLACIER ELEVATION/ICE SHEET ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

Time span2009-03-31 → 2012-11-08
Measured byAIRCRAFT (ATM) · DC-8 (ATM) · P-3B (ATM)
Processing levelLevel 1B
Spatial extent-180, 60, 180, 90
FormatsBinary
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

This data set contains spot elevation measurements of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, and Greenland, Antarctic Peninsula, and West Antarctic region ice surface acquired using the NASA Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) instrumentation. The data were collected as part of Operation IceBridge funded aircraft survey campaigns.

Get the data

ilatm1b_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ILATM1B",
    version="1",
    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
IceBridge ATM L1B Qfit Elevation and Return Strength, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
List of ATM L1B ITRF Versions VIEW RELATED INFORMATION