Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Try the next-generation Data Catalog at catalog-beta.data.gov and help shape it with your feedback.

  • Feedback

    • GLAS/ICESat L2 Global Land Surface Altimetry Data (HDF5) V034

    Metadata Updated: March 13, 2026

    GLAH06 is used in conjunction with GLAH05 to create the Level-2 altimetry products. Level-2 altimetry data provide surface elevations for ice sheets (GLAH12), sea ice (GLAH13), land (GLAH14), and oceans (GLAH15). Data also include the laser footprint geolocation and reflectance, as well as geodetic, instrument, and atmospheric corrections for range measurements. The Level-2 elevation products, are regional products archived at 14 orbits per granule, starting and stopping at the same demarcation (± 50° latitude) as GLAH05 and GLAH06. Each regional product is processed with algorithms specific to that surface type. Surface type masks define which data are written to each of the products. If any data within a given record fall within a specific mask, the entire record is written to the product. Masks can overlap: for example, non-land data in the sea ice region may be written to the sea ice and ocean products. This means that an algorithm may write the same data to more than one Level-2 product. In this case, different algorithms calculate the elevations in their respective products. The surface type masks are versioned and archived at NSIDC, so users can tell which data to expect in each product. Each data granule has an associated browse product.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
    Metadata Updated Date March 13, 2026

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
    Metadata Updated Date March 13, 2026
    Publisher NASA NSIDC DAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier C1000000443-NSIDC_ECS
    Data First Published 2003-02-20
    Language en-US
    Data Last Modified 2025-03-31
    Category geospatial
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id da9d3dd2-6376-43ed-89a2-a2e1247a2021
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://doi.org/10.5067/ICESAT/GLAS/DATA211
    Metadata Type geospatial
    Old Spatial -180.0 -86.0 180.0 86.0
    Program Code 026:001
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 7f8618ebe743f3e342531ed9c4474e0e4a6eff8c412f8a95e74591be0fb5f1c6
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2003-02-20T00:00:00Z/2009-10-11T23:59:59.999Z

    Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.