NASA-SSH: Along-Track Sea Surface Height Anomalies from 1992 to Present

NASA's standardized along-track sea surface height anomaly data provides observations from radar altimeter satellites including TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason series, and Sentinel-6. The dataset begins in October 1992 and continues to the present, with data parsed into daily files and quality-controlled to a common baseline. It includes a flag variable for valid observations and a basin flag for selecting data from specific ocean bodies.

Use Cases

• Modeling global and regional sea level rise trends based on the multi-decadal time series.
• Analyzing ocean circulation and eddy dynamics using the along-track, 1 Hz sea surface height observations.
• Studying specific ocean basins or lakes by filtering data using the provided basin flag variable.
• Assimilating quality-controlled sea surface height anomalies into ocean forecasting models.

Strengths

• Time series spans over 30 years, starting in October 1992 and continuing to the present.
• Data from multiple satellite missions (TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason series, Sentinel-6) are standardized to a common baseline.
• Includes a quality flag for valid observations and a pre-smoothed variable suggested for most users.
• New data is released 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 processing.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Observations measured using radar altimeter satellites in a reference mission orbit.

Time Range

October 1992 to present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:27:51.808579; new data released weekly with a few weeks' latency.

Geography

Global ocean and major lakes, with basin-specific filtering available.