GEOS-3: 5 Million Altimetric Sea Surface Height Measurements 1975-1978

NOAA/NODC/Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry produced these Geos-3 altimeter measurements. The dataset contains 5,006,956 altimetric sea surface heights with supporting information on sea state, wind speed, and tide heights. Data are compressed to a rate of 1 per second using a trim mean filter and are stored in binary format.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical sea surface height variability based on altimeter measurements.
• Studying ocean wave and wind conditions based on sea state and wind speed data.
• Comparing older tide models based on the included Schwiderski ocean tide and Cartwright solid-tide heights.
• Investigating data compression and filtering techniques for satellite altimetry based on the described trim mean filter.

Strengths

• Contains 5,006,956 individual altimetric measurements.
• Includes supporting geophysical variables such as sea state, wind speed, and tide heights.
• Data points are temporally compressed to a consistent 1-per-second rate.

Limitations

• Corrections for altimeter bias, tropospheric delays, and electromagnetic bias are not included.
• The description states included corrections for tides and orbit height are old and not very accurate.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), processed by NOAA/NODC/Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry.

Collection Method

Measurements from the Geos-3 satellite altimeter, compressed using a trim mean filter.

Time Range

1975-1978

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:31:36.312530; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage, likely determined by the satellite's orbit.