ICESat-2: MABEL Documentation

Mabel Data Available in HDF5 Format

PLEASE read the Data Usage Notes and the Standard Data Product Document (below) before using these data!

The 2014 MABEL data were taken with MABEL mounted on NASA\'s ER-2 aircraft. There were significant engineering improvements made to MABEL since the 2013 flights. All 2014 data provided to the public by this website is the second release of the 2014 data. The current data is Release 10. Release 10 used a new version of software with minor changes that fix a few reported data issues. Please read the Release 10 notes (MABEL software v2.0.1). for details. The major changes to the release 10 data was to fix a time of day issue for some photon events, updating the signal finding to a newer version of the ATLAS algorithm and an error in the application of troposphere correction. All MABEL data are now available for Release 10. A single mounting bias for the ER-2 was used for the entire 2014 campaign. We believe the pointing errors are stable throughout the flights, and are less than 30 m on the ground. Future reprocessing may provide improved height data quality and geolocation accuracy.

The 2013 MABEL data were taken with MABEL mounted on the Proteus aircraft. Also there were significant engineering improvements made to MABEL since the 2012 flights. All 2013 data provided to the public by this website is processed with the release 10 software but uses the same geolocation calibration as previous releases. The 2013 geolocation processing was calibrated for the Proteus, but there are known issues that may be related to aircraft flex. A single mounting bias was used for each day and may not fully represent all data segments of the day. It is known that any surface profile will contain some degree of aircraft motion and the level of this is dependent upon the steadiness of the aircraft and the stability of the mounting biases for that data segment. We believe the pointing errors are drifting throughout the flights, but are within 30 m on the ground.

Mabel Data Usage Notes

The Mabel Data Usage Notes describes items of interest in the initial Mabel data. Anyone attempting to use the Mabel data should download and read this.

Mabel Standard Data Product Documents

The Mabel Standard Data Product Documents describe the Mabel Data. Anyone attempting to use the Mabel data should download and read the appropriate document(s) for their data.

Mabel Data Dictionary

The Mabel Data Dictionary describes the structure of the Mabel data. They are in PDF and HTML formats. They do not replace the Standard Data Product Documents that have more description and wording.

Access Constraints

Data may not be reproduced or distributed without including the Citation For External Publication (below). Data may not be distributed in an altered form without the written permission of the ICESat-2 Project Science Office.

Citation For External Publication

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center: MABEL lidar data, MABEL ICESat-2 simulation data, Version 9, Greenbelt, Maryland USA, https://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/mabel/mabel_docs.php, 2014

Mabel Overview

Mabel AGU Posters

HDF5 Product Readers

The link below will take you to a page where you can download HDF5 file readers.

Data Descriptions

The link below will take you to a page where you can select Mabel flight data by date as well as download descriptions, Google Earth files, and CPL data.

Data Files

The link below will take you to pages where you can download HDF5 files for selected Mabel flights.

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