The Atmospheric Measurements of ICESat-2

ICESat-2 is an exciting new multi-beam, photon-counting, satellite lidar designed to acquire simultaneous high-resolution measurements of the earth’s surface and atmospheric structure. Launched in September, 2018 the Advanced Topographic Lidar Altimeter System (ATLAS) onboard ICESat-2 has been acquiring data continuously for nearly 1 year. The 3 laser beams comprising the atmospheric channel are providing excellent backscatter measurements that enable the retrieval of global cloud fraction, cloud and aerosol layer height, column optical depth, and blowing snow properties. Public release of the data products began with version 1 in May, 2019 and continues with a significantly improved version 2 in October, 2019. This presentation will give an overview of the ICESat-2 atmospheric channel and show examples of cloud, aerosol and blowing snow properties as well as comparisons of ATLAS and CALIOP measurements.