Thursday, June 16, 2011

Multi-Mission Sea Surface Height Climate Data Record
The Integrated Multi-Mission Ocean Altimeter Data for Climate Research Version 1 dataset for TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 and OSTM/Jason-2 developed at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) through NASA's MEaSURE's program is now available at PO.DAAC.  This dataset contains Sea Surface Height (SSH) anomalies from the 3 missions merged onto a single georeferenced orbit to form a SSH Climate Data Record (CDR).  The application of improved replacement orbits from GSFC (STD1007) tie the multiple missions to a common well-defined geodetic reference frame (ITRF2008) providing the geodetic consistency requirement necessary for the demanding application of global and regional mean sea level determination.  Altimeter data from the multi-mission Geophysical Data Records (GDRs) are interpolated to a common reference orbit facilitating direct time series analysis of the geo-referenced SSH.  All inter-mission biases have been applied to provide a seamless transition throughout the current 18+ year record. Each SSH data record is a SSH time series at a specific geo-referenced location defined by revolution number and along-track index.  
 
The data are in netCDF format in an array based on 3-dimensions (rev#, index, cycle) that permits direct access of individual locations at specific times (i.e. temporal and spatial sub-sampling). 

The datasets are described and discoverable via the PO.DAAC dataset information pages.

For more information please refer to:
Beckley, B.D., N.P. Zelensky, S.A. Holmes, F.G. Lemoine, R.D. Ray, S. Desai, S.T. Brown (2010) Assessment of the Jason-2 Extension to the TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 Sea-Surface Height Time Series for Global Mean Sea Level Monitoring.  
"Marine Geodesy", vol. 33, issue S1, pp. 447-471.  Doi 10.1080/01490419.2010.491029