The ICESat-2 Mission: Land, Ocean, and Inland Water Data Products for Middle and Low Latitude Science and Applications

NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat-2) is a polar orbiting mission, launched on September 15, 2018, with over two years of nearly continuous observations. The sole instrument onboard is the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), a micropulse, high repetition rate, six-beam, 532 nm Lidar with photon-counting technology. Although designed primarily for detecting height changes in ice caps and sea ice in the high latitudes, it continuously observes all terrain in its track including middle and low latitude regions as well, during approximately 15 orbits per day. The official ICESat-2 products include not only cryosphere data but also global high resolution parameters associated with tree canopies, land surface, oceans, and over 1.5 million inland water bodies consisting of lakes, rivers and coastal waters. This presentation provides an overview and the status of the ICESat-2 mission including: i) a summary of the salient technological features and orbit design, ii) the official ICESat-2 science data products for ice, vegetation canopy, ocean sea level, and inland water including several examples in the middle and low latitudes, iii) a list of NASA sponsored software tools for globally browsing the two year archive and for processing both the raw data and the official ICESat-2 geophysical data products, and iv) avenues for interested users to connect with the ICESat-2 Applications Program for answering questions and assistance in possibly using ICESat-2 data in your particular science or application. The overall goal is to facilitate the use of ICESat-2 data not only for science investigations but also for improved decision support applications with societal benefit. Additional ICESat-2 information, documentation and data products are publicly available at https://nsidc.org/data/icesat-2