Thursday, June 13, 2019

Correction: The release of GRACE-FO Level 2 RL06 contains the 9 monthly gravity field coefficient datasets from June-2018 through Apr-2019, Including [06, 07, 10, 11, 12]-2018 and [01, 02, 03, 04]-2019.

DOI:  10.5067/GFL20-MG060
          10.5067/GFL20-MC060
          10.5067/GFL20-MJ060

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) project and PO.DAAC are pleased to announce the public release of the GRACE-FO Level 2 (RL06) monthly gravity field coefficients from June-2018 through Apr-2019 from the Project Science Data System teams at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), and Center for Space Research (CSR).

The GRACE-FO mission, a joint partnership between NASA and GFZ, launched on 22 May 2018. It uses twin satellites to accurately map variations in the Earth's gravity field and surface mass distribution. GRACE-FO is designed as a successor to the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. Detailed information regarding the GRACE-FO mission is available from the project GRACE-FO website and also the PO.DAAC GRACE-FO mission webpage.

The GRACE-FO Level 2 RL06 is the first version of the data for the GRACE-FO mission. The Level 2 data contain spherical harmonic coefficients representing the Earth’s monthly gravity field geopotential, computed at the three GRACE-FO Science Data System centers: JPL, GFZ, and CSR. The GSM files contain the GRACE-FO updates to ocean and atmosphere background models; the background models themselves are contained in the GAA, GAB, GAC, and GAD files (see documentation for details). The datasets are produced in ASCII format with a YAML-encoded header in compliance with PO.DAAC Metadata Best Practices.

The datasets are described and discoverable via the PO.DAAC dataset information pages.  The dataset information pages also provide access to the technical documentation, the GRACE-FO Level-2 User Handbook, and guidance on how to cite the data.

Citation:  Dah-Ning Yuan, 2019, GRACE Follow-On Level-2 Gravity Field Product User Handbook. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL D-103922.

Comments/Questions? Please contact podaac@podaac.jpl.nasa.gov or visit the PO.DAAC Forum.