Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/ILNIRW1B
ILNIRW1B·v1·dataset

Raw laser pulses measuring ice surface height (IceBridge)

IceBridge ATM L1B Near-Infrared Waveforms V001
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 1B HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. The raw shape of laser pulses bounced off Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice, recorded with their exact locations. These near-infrared waveforms carry the detailed return signal used to figure out surface height.

How it's made. Collected by the Airborne Topographic Mapper laser instrument flown on aircraft during NASA's Operation IceBridge campaigns.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level building-block measurement meant to be paired with the matching green-laser elevation data; most people use the finished elevation products rather than these raw waveforms directly.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › SENSOR COUNTS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-10-10 → 2019-11-20
  • Measured byC-130 (ATM) · DC-8 (ATM) · G-V (ATM) · HU-25A (ATM) · HU-25C (ATM) · P-3B (ATM) · WP-3D ORION (ATM)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-180, 60, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF5
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This data set contains geolocated waveforms of Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic sea ice measured by the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) near-infrared (NIR) lidar. The data complement, and are intended to be used with, the IceBridge Narrow Swath ATM L1B Elevation and Return Strength with Waveforms data, which are measured at green wavelength. The data were acquired as part of aircraft survey campaigns funded by Operation IceBridge.

Get the data

ilnirw1b_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ILNIRW1B",
    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.