NASA GEOS-3: 5 Million Altimetric Sea Surface Height Measurements

NASA GEOS-3 Project data consist of 5,006,956 altimetric sea surface height measurements produced by NOAA/NODC/Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry. The dataset includes supporting information such as sea state, wind speed, and tide heights. Measurements 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 variations based on altimeter measurements.
• Studying correlations between sea state and wind speed based on the supporting information.
• Investigating ocean tide models by comparing Schwiderski and Cartwright tide height data.
• Developing or testing altimetry data processing algorithms using raw, uncorrected measurements.

Strengths

• Contains 5,006,956 individual altimetric measurements, providing a substantial volume of raw data.
• Includes multiple supporting variables per measurement, such as sea state, wind speed, and two types of tide heights.
• Data is compressed to a 1 Hz rate using a trim mean filter, which may reduce noise.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

NOAA/NODC/Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry

Collection Method

Measurements from the GEOS-3 satellite altimeter.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage, likely.