N: 90 S: -90 E: 180 W: -180
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Description
This data set (ATL08) contains along-track heights above the WGS84 ellipsoid (ITRF2014 reference frame) for the ground and canopy surfaces. The canopy and ground surfaces are processed in fixed 100 m data segments, which typically contain more than 100 signal photons. The data were acquired by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) observatory.
Version Description
Removed the segment_id parameter from the product; Added the layer_flag parameter (from ATL09) to allow users to filter by cloud cover; Updated the description of the multiple scattering warning flag (msw_flag) to account for values of “-1” in cases where the presence of clouds or blowing snow could not be determined; Removed the cloud_flag_asr parameter; added cloud_flag_atm and cloud_fold_flag for users to identify and filter potentially errant heights due to cloud cover; Developed a method to evaluate flagged results from DRAGANN (noise filtering) and correct intermittent, erroneous flags that can occur well above and below land and vegetation due to changing background rates and clouds; Reduced from 5% to 3% the minimum average canopy coverage pixel percentage (canopy cover estimate) from Landsat tiles; Reduced (to a value of 9) the smoothing window size used to refine ground surface-finding, regardless of calculated smoothing window sizes for the initial ground and top of canopy finding; Added a brightness flag (brightness_flag) to indicate potential snow accumulation (and similar bright surfaces) for each 100 m.
Product Summary
Platforms
Instruments
Spatial Extent
Spatial Reference System(s)
WGS 84 (EPSG:4326)
Location
GLOBAL
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
ORBIT
Temporal Extent
2018-10-14 to 2019-11-15
Temporal Resolution
91 Day
Concept ID
C4112411531-NSIDC_CPRD
Data State
DEPRECATED
Number of Files/Granules
0
Processing Level
3
Published
Science Keywords
Vegetation Height
Citation
Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.
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Neuenschwander, A., Popescu, S., Nelson, R., Harding, D., Pitts, K., & Robbins, J. (2019). ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Land and Vegetation Height, Version 2 [Data set]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/ATLAS/ATL08.002 Date Accessed: 2026-05-25
Neuenschwander, Amy, Sorin Popescu, Ross Nelson, David Harding, Katherine Pitts, and John Robbins. “ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Land and Vegetation Height, Version 2.” NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center, 2019. doi:10.5067/ATLAS/ATL08.002. Date Accessed: 2026-05-25
Neuenschwander, Amy, et al. ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Land and Vegetation Height, Version 2. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center, 2019, doi:10.5067/ATLAS/ATL08.002. Date Accessed: 2026-05-25
TABLE OF CONTENTS