ICESat-2 to GIS conversion utilities

Warning

This repository is in early phases of development and currently focuses on ATL08. The intention is to generalize for other ICESat-2 products in the future.

Code for converting ICESat-2 (ATL08) .h5 data into GIS-compatible points and polylines.

Installation

pip install nsidc-icesat2gis

Usage

nsidc-icesat2gis is primarily intended to be used programmatically as a Python library:

from nsidc.icesat2gis.atl08 import read_points_from_atl08


points_geodataframe = read_points_from_atl08(filepath="/path/to/example/ATL08_20260118035703_05313006_007_01.h5")

A CLI is also available:

$ nsidc-icesat2gis --help
Usage: nsidc-icesat2gis [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  atl08-to-lines          Given an ATL08 hdf5 as input, output a file...
  atl08-to-lines-parquet  Given an ATL08 hdf5 as input, output a file...
  atl08-to-points         Given an ATL08 hdf5 as input, output a file...
  lines-in-dir            Produce parquet files containing ATL08 lines...

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Level of Support

This repository is not actively supported by NSIDC but we welcome issue submissions and pull requests in order to foster community contribution.

See the LICENSE for details on permissions and warranties. Please contact nsidc@nsidc.org for more information.

Credit

This content was developed by the National Snow and Ice Data Center with funding from multiple sources.