PO.DAAC

Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital (EVS-2) mission that aims to improve estimates of sea level rise by addressing the question: To what extent are the oceans melting Greenland’s ice from below? OMG observes changing water temperatures on the continental shelf surrounding Greenland, and how marine glaciers react to the presence of warm, salty Atlantic Water. The complicated geometry of the sea floor steers currents on the shelf and often determines whether Atlantic Water can reach into the long narrow fjords and interact with the coastal glaciers. Because knowledge of these pathways is a critical component of understanding the interaction between the oceans and ice sheet, OMG facilitates improved measurements of the shape and depth of the sea floor in key regions.

OMG uses airborne, in situ, and ship-based observations to provide a revolutionary dataset for understanding ocean/ice interactions to improve estimates of global sea level rise.  Please see the OMG website and PO.DAAC’s OMG mission webpage for more information on the OMG mission.

OMG mission datasets are archived and distributed by the PO.DAAC. At this time, the PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the public release of the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) Multi Beam Echo Sounder (MBES) and Single Beam Echo Sounder (SBES) Bathymetry L2 Version 1 datasets. The datasets are described and discoverable via the PO.DAAC dataset information pages. The dataset information pages also provide access to the technical documentation and guidance on how to cite the data.

GOES-16 (G16) is the first satellite in the US NOAA third generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), a.k.a. GOES-R series (which will also include -S, -T, and -U). G16 was launched on 19 Nov 2016 and initially placed in an interim position at 89.5-deg W, between GOES-East and -West. Upon completion of Cal/Val in Dec 2018, it was moved to its permanent position at 75.2-deg W, and declared NOAA operational GOES-East on 18 Dec 2018. NOAA is responsible for all GOES-R products, including Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI).

The Level 2 Preprocessed (L2P) SST product is derived at the native sensor resolution using NOAA Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Ocean (ACSPO) system. ACSPO first processes every 10min FD data SSTs are derived from BTs using the ACSPO clear-sky mask (ACSM; Petrenko et al., 2010) and Non-Linear SST (NLSST) algorithm (Petrenko et al., 2014). Currently, only 4 longwave bands centered at 8.4, 10.3, 11.2, and 12.3 um are used (the 3.9 microns was initially excluded, to minimize possible discontinuities in the diurnal cycle). The regression is tuned against quality controlled in situ SSTs from drifting and tropical mooring buoys in the NOAA iQuam system (Xu and Ignatov, 2014). The 10-min FD data are subsequently collated in time, to produce 1-hr L2P product, with improved coverage, and reduced cloud leakages and image noise, compared to each individual 10min image. In the collated L2P, SSTs and BTs are only reported in clear-sky water pixels (defined as ocean, sea, lake or river, and up to 5 km inland) and fill values elsewhere. All pixels with valid SSTs are recommended for use. The L2P is reported in netCDF4 GHRSST Data Specification version 2 (GDS2) format, 24 granules per 24hr interval, with a total data volume of 0.6GB/day. 

The L3C (Level 3 Collated) product is a gridded version of the ACSPO G16/ABI L2P product available at https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/ABI_G16-STAR-L2P-v2.70. The L3C output files are 1hr granules in netCDF4 format, compliant with the GHRSST Data Specification version 2 (GDS2). There are 24 granules per 24hr interval, with a total data volume of 0.2GB/day.

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, a joint partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), launched on 22 May 2018. It uses twin satellites to accurately map variations in the Earth's gravity field and surface mass distribution. It is designed as a successor to the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission.

Conceptually very similar to the original GRACE mission (2002 – 2017), GRACE-FO consists of two identical satellites flying in formation around Earth at an initial altitude of approximately 490 kilometers and a nominal separation distance of 220+/-50 kilometers. Instruments on board the satellites precisely measure changes in the distance between them due to orbital perturbations caused by geographical and temporal variations in Earth's gravity field.

GRACE-FO will expand GRACE's legacy of scientific achievements. These include tracking mass changes in Earth's polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers (which impacts global sea level); estimating total water storage on land (from groundwater changes in deep aquifers to changes in soil moisture and surface water); inferring changes in deep ocean currents, a driving force in climate; and even measuring changes within the solid Earth itself, such as postglacial rebound and the impact of major earthquakes.

GRACE-FO mission datasets are archived and distributed by the PO.DAAC. The datasets are described and discoverable via the PO.DAAC dataset information pages.  The dataset information pages also provide access to the technical documentation, GRACE-FO Level-1 User Handbook, and guidance on how to cite the data.