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Description
NOTE ON GLAS BINARY DATA: Access to all ICESat/GLAS binary data products at NSIDC DAAC was removed 01 August 2017. The Binary Data Subsetter also has been decommissioned. ICESat/GLAS data remain available in HDF5 format (GLAH12).
The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) instrument on the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) provides global measurements of polar ice sheet elevation to discern changes in ice volume (mass balance) over time. Secondary objectives of GLAS are to measure sea ice roughness and thickness, cloud and atmospheric properties, land topography, vegetation canopy heights, ocean surface topography, and surface reflectivity.
GLAS has a 1064 nm laser channel for surface altimetry and dense cloud heights, and a 532 nm lidar channel for the vertical distribution of clouds and aerosols.
This level-2 altimetry product (GLA12) provides surface elevations for ice sheets. Data also include the laser footprint gelocation and reflectance, as well as geodetic, instrument, and atmospheric corrections for range measurements.
Each data granule has an associated browse product 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. Data are in scaled integer binary format, big-endian (Unix) byte order.
Version Description
Release 34 incorporates fixes for several data issues that were determined to exist in the GLAS Release 33 data products.
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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Zwally, H., Schutz, R., Bentley, C., Bufton, J., Herring, T., Minster, J.-B., Spinhirne, J., & Thomas, R. (2014). GLAS/ICESat L2 Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheet Altimetry Data, Version 34 [Dataset]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/ICESAT/GLAS/DATA225 Date Accessed: 2026-06-17
Zwally, H., Schutz, R., Bentley, C., Bufton, J., Herring, T., Minster, J.-B., Spinhirne, J., & Thomas, R. (2014). GLAS/ICESat L2 Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheet Altimetry Data, Version 34 [Dataset]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/ICESAT/GLAS/DATA225 Date Accessed: 2026-06-17
Zwally, H., et al. “GLAS/ICESat L2 Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheet Altimetry Data, Version 34.” NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center, 2014, https://doi.org/10.5067/ICESAT/GLAS/DATA225. Date Accessed: 2026-06-17
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Price, Stephen F., Hoffman, Matthew J., Bonin, Jennifer A., Howat, Ian M., Neumann, Thomas, Saba, Jack, Tezaur, Irina, Guerber, Jeffrey, Chambers, Don P., Evans, Katherine J., Kennedy, Joseph H., Lenaerts, Jan, Lipscomb, William H., Perego, Mauro, Salinger, Andrew G., Tuminaro, Raymond S., van den Broeke, Michiel R., Nowicki, Sophie M. J.