Raw airborne laser heights over polar ice (narrow swath)

In plain English

What it measures. Individual spot-height measurements of the ice and snow surface over Greenland and the Arctic and Antarctic, paired with the full shape of each returning laser pulse, from a narrow flight-path swath.

How it's made. Collected by the Airborne Topographic Mapper, a laser altimeter flown on various aircraft during NASA's Operation IceBridge survey campaigns.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level measurement glaciologists use to track ice-surface elevation and change; most people rely on the processed elevation products built from it rather than these raw spot heights.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE ELEVATIONSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › SENSOR COUNTS

Coverage & cadence

Time span2017-10-29 → 2019-11-20
Measured byC-130 (ATM) · DC-8 (ATM) · G-V (ATM) · HU-25C (ATM) · P-3B (ATM)
Processing levelLevel 1B
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -53
FormatsHDF5
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 with corresponding waveforms of Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic sea ice. The data complement the IceBridge ATM L1B Near-Infrared Waveforms data, which are measured at near-infrared wavelength. The data were acquired as part of aircraft survey campaigns funded by Operation IceBridge.

Get the data

ilnsaw1b_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ILNSAW1B",
    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 Narrow Swath ATM L1B Elevation and Return Strength with Waveforms, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
List of ATM L1B ITRF Versions VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
List of ATM Transceivers Used During IceBridge Missions VIEW RELATED INFORMATION