NASA JPL Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center

nasa-podaac-topex_l2_ost_gdr_vms

TOPEX/Poseidon L2 Ocean Surface Topography Geophysical Data Record Vax byte order little endian

The TOPEX/POSEIDON GDR (Geophysical Data Record) contains global coverage altimeter data. The objective of the TOPEX/POSEIDON mission, launched in August 1992, is to determine ocean topography with a sea surface height measurement precision of 3 cm and a sealevel measurement accuracy of 13 cm. The dataset contains measurements from two altimeters, a NASA dual frequency (Ku and C band) instrument similar to the Geosat altimeter, and a French space agency (CNES) instrument which is a proof-of-concept solid-state altimeter (Ku band). It also contains Sea Surface Height (SSH), significant wave height, ionospheric correction, tides and other geophysical corrections. It is emphasized that this product is considered research data because of the form and content of the data. The data consist entirely of files comprising headers and data records which contain over a hundred parameters for each second. It is swath data and there are no images. Analysis software is the responsibility of the user. Calculation of sea surface height anomalies from the altimeter range and environmental corrections is the responsibility of the user. This dataset is formatted as little-endian binary. The data are arranged in 10 day cycles that are separated into 254 passes, each about 56 minutes.

podaac.jpl.nasa.gov

http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/TOPEX_L2_OST_GDR_VMS

Identified by : TOPEX_L2_OST_GDR_VMS

This dataset was released on January 21, 2011.

The time range for this dataset is October 01, 1992 to October 07, 2005 (23:49 PM).

The spatial range for this dataset is -66° to 66° latitude, and 0° to 360° longitude. map (center)

This dataset uses data from an instance of the topex-nasa-radar-altimeter instrument on the topex-poseidon platform.
This dataset uses data from an instance of the poseidon-1 instrument on the topex-poseidon platform.
This dataset uses data from an instance of the topex-microwave-radiometer instrument on the topex-poseidon platform.

Also known as :

• datasetId PODAAC-TPGDR-VMS0A (podaac lexicon)
• dataset TOPEX_L2_OST_GDR_VMS (podaac lexicon)