Global Water Storage Anomalies from GRACE and GRACE-FO Satellites

JPL GRACE and GRACE-FO Mascon data provides monthly global water storage and height anomalies in equivalent water thickness units. The dataset contains 4,551 independent estimates of surface mass change derived from an equal-area 3-degree grid. It is processed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory using the Release 06.3 Version 04 Mascon approach.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in monthly water storage anomalies for 4,551 mascon grid cells to study regional hydrological extremes like droughts and floods.
• Model ice sheet mass balance by examining equivalent water height anomalies over Greenland and Antarctica.
• Investigate ocean mass variations by processing monthly water thickness data over ocean basins.
• Apply custom coastline leakage correction algorithms to separate land and ocean mass signals in coastal mascon cells.

Strengths

• Contains 4,551 independent mascon estimates providing high spatial detail.
• Data is intrinsically processed to remove correlated errors, eliminating the need for post-hoc de-correlation or smoothing.
• Provides a continuous record from GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite missions for long-term trend analysis.

Limitations

• Does not correct for leakage errors across coastlines, limiting direct use for coastal studies without expert post-processing.
• Intended for expert use only, with a filtered version recommended for general users.
• Specific temporal coverage, row count, and update recency are not provided in the input.

Provenance

Source

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), POCLOUD.

Collection Method

Derived from GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite gravity data using the Mascon (mass concentration) solution on an equal-area 3-degree grid.

Geography

Global