Skip to main content

Description

ATL04 contains along-track normalized relative backscatter (NRB) profiles of the atmosphere. The product includes full 532 nm (14 km tall) uncalibrated attenuated backscatter profiles at 25 times per second for vertical bins of approximately 30 meters. Calibration coefficient values derived from data between 13.5 and 11 km above the surface are also included. The data were acquired by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board the ICESat-2 observatory.

Version Description

- Addition of a new L3A cloud folding algorithm to better detect and flag instances when clouds above 15 km are folded down to the lower few km of the profile - Detection and flagging of layers that are wholly below ground and thus folded - Detection and flagging of folded layers that straddle ground - Setting the layer_attr parameter to a value of 11 when a layer is determined to be folded from above 15 km - Changes to the structure of the layer detection algorithm (DDA) to enable execution of N passes of the DDA - Improved thin layer detection

Product Summary

Platforms
ICESat-2
Instruments
ATLAS
Spatial Extent

N: 88 S: -88 E: 180 W: -180

Spatial Resolution
280 Meters
Location
GLOBAL
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
ORBIT
Temporal Extent
2018-10-13 to Present
Concept ID
C3420692319-NSIDC_CPRD
Data State
ACTIVE
Number of Files/Granules
36979
Processing Level
2A
Published
Science Keywords
Lidar Backscatter

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.

Copy Citation

Palm, S., Yang, Y., Herzfeld, U., & Hancock, D. (2025). ATLAS/ICESat-2 L2A Normalized Relative Backscatter Profiles, Version 7 [Data set]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/ATLAS/ATL04.007 Date Accessed: 2026-01-19

Documents