ICESat-2 lead fraction and chord length estimates

Along-track and gridded (25 km) lead fraction and chord length estimates across the Arctic and Southern Ocean derived from ICESat-2 ATL07 (height and type) data. Arctic Ocean data span the period November 2018 to April 2019, Southern Ocean data span the period May 2019 to September 2019. Files include:

'IS2_raw_chord_lengths'...files include the raw chord length estimates for each beam. The data are in ascending beam and then time order.

'IS2_swath_section_leads'...files include the mean 10 km swath (3 strong beams) lead fraction estimates. The data are in ascending time order.

'IS2_gridded_chord_lengths'...files provided gridded versions of the individual chord length data on a 25 km x 25 km polar sterographic grid (EPSG: 3411 for the Arctic and 3412 for the Southern Ocean) for the two complete winter seasons.

'IS2_gridded_lead_fraction'...files provided gridded versions of the swath data on a 25 km x 25 km polar sterographic grid (EPSG: 3411 for the Arctic and 3412 for the Southern Ocean) for the two complete winter seasons.

All data are provided in the NetCDF-4 format. Browse images of the lead fraction and gridded chord length estimates are included. The data processing methodology is described in the following peer-reviewed publication:

Petty, A. A., Bagnardi, M., Kurtz, N., Tilling, R., Fons, S., Armitage, T., et al. (2021). Assessment of ICESat‐2 sea ice surface classification with Sentinel‐2 imagery: implications for freeboard and new estimates of lead and floe geometry. Earth and Space Science, 8, e2020EA001491. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EA001491