NASA-SSH Project: Global Mean Sea Level Trend from Satellite Altimetry, 1992-Present

Global Mean Sea Level trend data derived from integrated radar altimeter missions including TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason series, and Sentinel-6A, covering September 1992 to present. NASA produced this dataset by applying bias adjustments, cross-calibrations, and Glacial Isostatic Adjustment to ensure consistency across missions. The data are reported as sea surface height anomalies relative to a 20-year mean and are updated weekly with a latency of a few weeks.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term global sea-level rise trends based on the 30+ year time series.
• Analyzing El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indicators derived from sea surface height anomalies.
• Studying regional ocean basin variability using the provided basin flag and shapefile definitions.
• Validating climate model projections against observed satellite altimetry records.

Strengths

• Time series spans over 30 years, from September 1992 to present.
• Data integrates five major satellite altimeter missions with applied cross-calibrations.
• Includes a basin flag variable for filtering observations by specific ocean bodies.
• Updated approximately once per week with a latency of a few weeks.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.

Provenance

Source

NASA

Collection Method

Integrated multi-mission ocean altimeter data from TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, OSTM/Jason-2, Jason-3, and Sentinel-6A satellites.

Time Range

September 1992 to present

Freshness

Updated weekly with a latency of a few weeks.

Geography

Global