NASA Earthdata Webinar: IceFlow and icepyx: Python tools for Harmonizing Laser Altimetry Datasets in an Open Science Framework

When: Wednesday 28 April 2021, 02:00 PM – 03:0 PM (Eastern Daylight Savings Time [UTC/GMT-4])

Overview: Since 2003, NASA’s ICESat, IceBridge, and ICESat-2 missions have collected valuable information on the evolution of land and sea ice using laser altimetry technology. However, combining these disparate and large-volume data products, available from the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC), presents a challenge in terms of varied data formats, coordinate reference systems, spatial coverage, and discovery and access methods.

This webinar will introduce and demonstrate two Python-based tools that offer solutions to these persistent challenges. NSIDC DAAC’s IceFlow API and Jupyter Notebook harmonize these data products into similar formats and apply the necessary geophysical corrections for users to immediately access, compare, and visualize decades of data in a single workflow. The open-source icepyx project is both a software library and a community composed of ICESat-2 data users, developers, and the scientific community, who are working together to develop a shared library of resources that simplify the process of querying, obtaining, analyzing, and manipulating ICESat-2 datasets to enable scientific discovery. While this presentation will focus on cryospheric applications of these NASA missions, the challenges they address are not unique to the broader Earth science community. They also demonstrate what is possible within and across disciplines when tools are developed using an open science framework.

Presenters:

Amy Steiker and Nicholas Kotlinski, NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC)

Dr. Jessica Scheick, University of New Hampshire, Earth Systems Research Center

For event information or to register see,

https://earthdata.adobeconnect.com/eqnku1dl4z85/event/event_info.html