NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) ground calibration data for the Arctic Spring campaign 2019

The Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) was a scanning lidar developed and used by NASA for observing the Earth’s topography for several scientific applications, foremost of which was the measurement of changing Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice. ATM measured topography to an accuracy of better than 5 centimeters by incorporating measurements from GPS (global positioning system) receivers and inertial navigation system (INS) attitude sensors.

This particular data set was used in a publication by Studinger et al., 2022 (https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-3649-2022) that developed methods for estimating water depths of supraglacial lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet.

In pressurized aircraft the transmitted laser pulse travels thru the aircraft’s optical window close to the scan mirror. The optical delay fiber that is necessary to separate the transmit pulse and window reflection as well as other system components introduce a laser time-of-flight range bias that needs to be determined from ground calibration measurements. This data set includes ATM waveform data from the T6 and T7 lidars, as well as the true ranges and a MATLAB® function to read ground test waveform data.

See also: 

NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) ground calibration data for waveform data products: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7225936

User guide for NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper HDF5 Waveform Data: Products: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7246097

Collection of MATLAB® functions for working with ATM (Airborne Topographic Mapper, laser altimetry data products in HDF5 waveform format: https://github.com/mstudinger/ATM-waveform-tools

Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) Bathymetry Toolkit (MATLAB® functions): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6341229