Rapid Access and Visualization of Spaceborne Altimetry Data from ICESat and ICESat-2

The goal of OpenAltimetry is to provide altimetry-specific data discovery and access with a focus on ease-of-use and quick response times. OpenAltimetry currently supports NASA's laser altimeter missions: ICESat (2003~2009) and ICESat-2 (scheduled for launch in 2018) with a powerful, web-based interactive interface that provides data discovery, processing and visualization capabilities targeting both novice and expert users across different science specializations. OpenAltimetry is modelled after NASA's highly popular EOSDIS Worldview application and uses a unique solution to allow users to efficiently interact with altimetry data. For data management, we are using a hybrid solution with highly optimized tiered storage databases and object storage. the OpenAltimetry application was built cloud-ready, with its highly scalable design and service-oriented architecture. We have developed an efficient data ingestion pipeline that streamlines processing and ingestion of altimetry datasets into the OpenAltimetry system. The waveform energy (for ICESat) and photon (for ICESat-2) data are stored in their original HDF5 format for efficiency. This will be critical for getting large volumes of altimetry data (e.g. ICESat-2) into the system rapidly for access by the wider community.