Changes for this version include:

• A new parameter was added to the equation used to compute blowing snow. The algorithm detects blowing snow at two rates -- high (25 Hz) and low (1 Hz) -- however, the optimal threshold for low rate detection was found to be different (lower) than for high rate detection. The new parameter (ancillary_data/atmosphere/lr_bsnow_fac) adjusts the low rate detection threshold and improves retrievals. The new parameter's nominal value of 0.5 is adjustable.
• Low-rate blowing snow height (profile_[x]/low_rate/bsnow_h) is now computed as defined in the ATBD for ATL04 (section 4.5.1 | Blowing Snow layer Height).
• The value for the high rate blowing snow threshold constant (ancillary_data/atmosphere/bs_thresh_scale) was changed from 10.0 to 20.0 to reduce blowing snow detections.
• A new parameter for blowing snow intensity (profile_[x]/high_rate/bsnow_intensity) was added to the product; it is defined as the average scattering ratio within the blowing snow layer multiplied by the 10 m level wind speed.
• ATL09 was updated to accommodate the new pass-through constant (alpha) added to ATL04.
• The single scaling constant phi, used to define a threshold in the apparent surface reflectance (ASR) cloud detection algorithm, was replaced by two constants, phi_land and phi_ocean. These new scaling parameters allow for different thresholds over land and ocean to address analyses that indicate the algorithm was reporting too many clouds over land and too few over ocean.
• Areas masked out in ATL04 due to dense clouds were not being properly masked out in ATL09. This bug was corrected.
• The ancillary_data/atmosphere/cloud_det_layer_thick parameter was no longer needed and removed.