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Description
This data set (ATL06) provides geolocated, land-ice surface heights (above the WGS 84 ellipsoid, ITRF2014 reference frame), plus ancillary parameters that can be used to interpret and assess the quality of the height estimates. 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
ATL09 pass-through data (cloud flag parameters) are now being written to ATL06 (gt[x]/land_ice_segments/geophysical/layer_flag). Note that if two flags intersect an ATL06 segment, the higher flag value is used. The layer_flag parameter is important for predicting forward scattering; The large DEMs previously used by ATL06 are no longer required inputs. If they are provided in the processing control file, the values are queried as in previous releases; if the DEMs are not provided in the control file, DEM values from ATL03 are used; Molecular transmission used to compute effective background is now being read from ATL09. Prior versions used a default value; Added radial orbit error as gt[x]/land_ice_segments/ground_track/sigma_geo_r (parameter sigma_h from ATL03); ATL03 data flagged with non-zero values in podppd_flag are no longer processed for ATL06; Changed the residual histograms to range from -50m to +50m with varying bin sizes; Corrected the long names for sigma_geo_at and sigma_geo_xt in the ATL06 file metadata; Residual histograms are centered on h_mean instead of h_li.
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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Smith, B., Fricker, H., Gardner, A., Siegfried, M., Adusumilli, S., Csath??, B., Holschuh, N., Nilsson, J., Paolo, F., & Team, T. I. C. E. S.-2 S. (2020). ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Land Ice Height, Version 3 [Data set]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/ATLAS/ATL06.003 Date Accessed: 2026-06-13
Smith, Ben, Helen Fricker, Alex Gardner, Matthew Siegfried, Susheel Adusumilli, Be??ta Csath??, Nick Holschuh, Johan Nilsson, Fernando Paolo, and The ICESat-2 Science Team. “ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Land Ice Height, Version 3.” NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center, 2020. doi:10.5067/ATLAS/ATL06.003. Date Accessed: 2026-06-13
Smith, Ben, et al. ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Land Ice Height, Version 3. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center, 2020, doi:10.5067/ATLAS/ATL06.003. Date Accessed: 2026-06-13
Khan, Shfaqat A., Bamber, Jonathan L., Rignot, Eric, Helm, Veit, Aschwanden, Andy, Holland, David M., van den Broeke, Michiel, King, Michalea, Noel, Brice, Truffer, Martin, Humbert, Angelika, Colgan, William, Vijay, Saurabh, Kuipers Munneke, Peter