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Full catalog/ATL10
ATL10·v007·dataset

How high sea ice floats above the water, from NASA's ICESat-2 laser satellite (v7)

ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Sea Ice Freeboard V007
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF5
Illustration of what How high sea ice floats above the water, from NASA's ICESat-2 laser satellite (v7) shows
Illustration of the concept — not real satellite data.
In plain English

What it measures. Sea ice freeboard, meaning how high the ice sticks up above the surrounding water, measured along the satellite's track in 10-kilometer segments.

How it's made. Calculated from the ATLAS laser altimeter aboard the ICESat-2 satellite, which times laser pulses to measure surface heights precisely.

How & where you'd use it. Used to study sea ice and estimate its thickness, an important indicator of polar conditions and climate change.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › FREEBOARD

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-10-14 → ongoing
  • Measured byICESat-2 (ATLAS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -88, 180, 88
  • FormatsHDF5
  • StatusACTIVE

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

ATL10 contains along-track sea ice freeboard calculated for 10 km swath segments. The data were acquired by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board the ICESat-2 observatory.

Get the data

atl10_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ATL10",
    version="007",
    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.