• For a list of known issues with this product, see the Known Issues document under the Documentation section of the page.

  • Data from 13 November 2022 to 26 October 2023 in Version 6 of ATL03, ATL04, and their derived products will be reprocessed to ITRF2014. See the Data Announcement for details.

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L2A Global Geolocated Photon Data, Version 6
Data set id:
ATL03
DOI: 10.5067/ATLAS/ATL03.006
This is the most recent version of these data.
Version Summary
Changes for Version 6 include:

  • Added parameters for photon weights

  • Updated sigma_h to be dynamically calculated

  • Changed data type for ph_id_count to an unsigned 1-byte integer

  • Changed the geographic extent metadata from a predicted orbit path to a geodetic polygon

  • Updated the ANC42 transmitter echo path reference file to reflect changes in the ATL02 time-of-flight calculations stemming from calibration file updates

  • Updated ATL03 photon heights to include an updated zero range point

Overview

This data set (ATL03) contains height above the WGS 84 ellipsoid (ITRF2014 reference frame), latitude, longitude, and time for all photons downlinked by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) observatory. The ATL03 product was designed to be a single source for all photon data and ancillary information needed by higher-level ATLAS/ICESat-2 products. As such, it also includes spacecraft and instrument parameters and ancillary data not explicitly required for ATL03.
Parameter(s):
TERRAIN ELEVATION
Platform(s):
ICESat-2
Sensor(s):
ATLAS
Data Format(s):
HDF5
Temporal Coverage:
13 October 2018 to present
Temporal Resolution:
  • 91 day
Spatial Resolution:
  • 70 cm
  • 70 cm
Spatial Reference System(s):
WGS 84
EPSG:4326
Spatial Coverage:
N:
90
S:
-90
E:
180
W:
-180
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.

Data Access & Tools

A free NASA Earthdata Login account is required to access these data. Learn More

Help Articles

General Questions & FAQs

This article covers frequently asked questions about the NASA NSIDC DAAC's Earthdata cloud migration project and what it means to data users.
This short article describes the customization services available for ICESat-2 data using Earthdata Search.

How to Articles

Many NSIDC DAAC data sets can be accessed using the NSIDC DAAC's Data Access Tool. This tool provides the ability to search and filter data with spatial and temporal constraints using a map-based interface.Users have the option to
To convert HDF5 files into binary format you will need to use the h5dump utility, which is part of the HDF5 distribution available from the HDF Group. How you install HDF5 depends on your operating system.
Learn the basic steps for using OpenAltimetry to browse and download ICESat-2 data products.
This guide will provide an overview of the altimetry measurements and data sets across the missions, as well as a guide for accessing the data through NASA Earthdata Search and programmatically using an Application Programming Interface (API).
The NASA Earthdata Cloud is the NASA cloud-based archive of Earth observations. It is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Learn how to find and access NSIDC DAAC data directly in the cloud.
All data from the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) can be accessed directly from our HTTPS file system, using wget or curl. Basic command line instructions are provided in the article below. 
NASA Earthdata Search is a map-based interface where a user can search for Earth science data, filter results based on spatial and temporal constraints, and order data with customizations including re-formatting, re-projecting, and spatial and parameter subsetting.
This webinar introduces the ICESat-2 mission and shows you how to explore, access and customize ICESat-2 data with the OpenAltimetry application, using NSIDC DAAC tools, and shows you how to subset, reformat and analyze the data using Python.