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Full catalog/ILSIG1B
ILSIG1B·v1·dataset

Raw laser pulses measuring ice height (IceBridge)

IceBridge Photon Counting Lidar L1B Unclassified Geolocated Photon Elevations V001
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 1B HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. The height of the ice surface over Antarctica, recorded as the elevation of individual laser-light photons bounced off the ground. The points are located but not yet sorted into ground versus noise.

How it's made. Collected by a photon-counting laser (lidar) flown on an aircraft during NASA's Operation IceBridge as part of an Antarctic research collaboration.

How & where you'd use it. A raw building-block input for ice-elevation studies; researchers typically process and classify these photon points before using them to measure ice height and change.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2011-11-29 → 2011-12-23
  • Measured byBT-67 (Sigma Space Lidar)
  • 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 geolocated photon elevations captured over Antarctica using the Sigma Space photon counting lidar. The data were collected by scientists working on the International Collaborative Exploration of the Cryosphere through Airborne Profiling (ICECAP) project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Collaborative Research Center, and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with additional support from NASA Operation IceBridge.

Get the data

ilsig1b_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ILSIG1B",
    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.