Description

NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) was launched in September 2018 to measure the heights of all surfaces across the globe, including land ice (glaciers and ice sheets), sea ice, water bodies, and vegetation. ICESat-2 carries a photon-counting laser altimeter that sends out 10,000 laser pulses per second to make measurements every 70 centimeters along the satellite’s ground path. 

NASA’s National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) distributes ICESat-2 data products in the NASA Earthdata Cloud, along with an abundance of learning resources for users to visualize, access, and customize each data product.

In this webinar, speakers from NSIDC, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and NASA's Langley Research Center will introduce the ICESat-2 Global Geolocated Photons product (ATL03) and present an overview of two snow depth estimation methods: the pathlength method and the snow on/off method. Attendees also will have the opportunity to explore data discovery and access through live demonstrations using Jupyter Notebooks and NASA Earthdata Search.

Bios

• Aimée Gibbons is part of the ICESat-2 Project Science Office at NASA Goddard. She supports mission planning, data analyses, and quality evaluation, and she has led the Global Geolocated Photon data product (ATL03) since 2021. ATL03 is the primary source of ATLAS data for surface-type specific data products, providing global height data.
   
• Xiaomei Lu is a research scientist in the Lidar Science Branch of the Science Directorate at NASA Langley. She is leading the development of innovative uses of remote sensing data for ocean biology, bathymetry, and cryosphere studies. She is currently serving as principal investigator for studies of the intersections and interactions of sea ice, ocean biology, and the atmosphere.
   
• Zachary Fair is a scientist at the University of Maryland in a cooperative agreement with NASA GSFC to support global snow monitoring efforts with existing and future satellite missions. He was the ICESat-2 data coordinator for SnowEx 2023 campaigns, planning ICESat-2 observations connected to field efforts. He was involved in multiple ICESat-2 and SnowEx hackweeks, both as a participant and a developer, and he is part of the icepyx development team.
   
• Mikala Beig works in the User Services group at the NSIDC DAAC. She assists the data user community with NASA Earthdata discovery and access, particularly as NASA transitions its data archives to the Earthdata Cloud. She is passionate about promoting the wide range of Earth-observing data available from NASA, and enjoys participating in all types of outreach activities, including webinars, NASA Openscapes workshops, and hackweeks.
   
• Aimee Neeley works at NASA Goddard and joined the ICESat-2 team as the Mission Applications Lead in 2023. In this role, she engages with current and future applied users and stakeholders, organizes workshops and other events to foster ICESat-2 science and applications engagement and collaboration, and represents ICESat-2 applications in the community.