New Atmospheric Research Products for ICESat-2

Currently, NASA only has the 2^nd generation Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat-2) spaceborne lidar in operation. While primarily designed as an altimetry mission for measuring ice sheet elevation and sea ice thickness, ICESat-2 also provides atmospheric profiles of clouds and aerosols at 532 nm using a photo counting detection approach. In this work, we present an overview of plans and preliminary steps toward a new, advanced ICESat-2 atmospheric research product. This new atmospheric data product leverages a Deep Learning based signal denoising capability that has demonstrated improved daytime signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) by removing daytime solar background contributions without compromising data product resolution. Additionally, the new data product will include machine-learning based removal of atmospheric signal folding owing to the high pulse repetition rate of ICESat-2. To advance ICESat-2’s aerosol typing capability, output from Moderate-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) will be invoked to assist with aerosol classification. Highlights of this new product include improved atmospheric layer detection, classification, and optical property retrievals for use by the atmospheric lidar community who have used Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) and CATS data.