Continuity Evaluation of Surface Retrieval Algorithms for ICESat-2/ATLAS Photon-Counting Laser Altimetry Data Products

The Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission team is developing algorithms to produce along-track and gridded science data products for a variety of surface types, including land ice, sea ice, land, and ocean. The ATL03 data product will contain geolocated photons for each of the six beams, and will incorporate geophysical corrections as well as preliminary photon classifications (signal vs. background). Higher level along-track and gridded data products for various surface types are processed using the ATL03 geolocated photons. The data processing schemes developed for each of the surface types rely on independent surface finding algorithms optimized to identify ground, canopy, water, or ice surfaces, as appropriate for a particular geographical location. In such cases where multiple surface types are present in close proximity to one another (e.g. land-ocean interface), multiple surface finding algorithms may be employed to extract surfaces along the same segment of a lidar profile. This study examines the effects on continuity of the various surface finding algorithms, specifically for littoral/coastal areas. These areas are important to the cryospheric, hydrologic, and biospheric communities in that continuity between the respective surface elevation products is required to fully utilize the information provided by ICESat-2 and its Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument.