GLAS HDF5 products are in Hierarchical Data Format 5 format, also known as netCDF-4/HDF5. The intent with the HDF5 format data is to make the Release 33 data available in the same format as several future NASA missions, including ICESat 2 and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), and to make ICESat 1 Release 33 data more accessible to a broader user community.
Header
The header description information found in the binary files is embedded in the HDF5 files.
Invalid values
Not all data from GLAS are suitable for science processing. Many parameters have invalid values or, in CF terms, "_FillValues
". An invalid value means that the measurement is not valid for that element of data.
Each data granule has associated browse products that users can quickly view to determine the general quality of the data in the granule. Browse products consist of image plots of key parameters and statistics.