Integrated Multi-Mission Ocean Altimeter Data for Climate Research Version 5.2

The Integrated Multi-Mission Ocean Altimeter Sea Surface Height (SSH) Version 5.2 dataset provides level 2 along track sea surface height anomalies (SSHA) for 10-day cycles from the TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, OSTM/Jason-2, Jason-3, and Sentinel-6A missions geo-referenced to a mean reference orbit. It is produced by NASA Sea Surface Height (NASA-SSH) project investigators at Goddard Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory with support from NASA’s Physical Oceanography program, and was developed originally as an Earth System Data Record (ESDR) under the Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, which supported forward processing and incremental refinements through version 5.1 (released in April 2022).

Geophysical Data Records (GDRs) from each altimetry mission were interpolated to a common reference orbit with biases and cross-calibrations applied so that the derived SSHA are consistent between satellites to form a single homogeneous climate data record. The entire multi-mission data record covers the period from September 1992 to present; it is extended to include new observations approximately once each quarter. The previous release (version 5.1) integrated Jason-3 data and applied revised internal tides and pole tide across missions (GDR_F standard). The current release (version 5.2) includes the following revisions: a) GSFC std2006_cs21 orbit for all missions, b) GOT5.1 ocean tide model, c) TOPEX/Poseidon GDR_F data, d) Sentinel-6 LR version F08 data, e) Jason-3 re-calibrated radiometer wet troposphere correction. More information about the data content and derivation can be found in the v5.2 User’s Handbook (https://doi.org/10.5067/ALTUG-TJ152).

Please note that this collection contains the same data as https://doi.org/10.5067/ALTTS-TJA52, re-organized into one netCDF file per cycle for convenience.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field	Value
Maintainer	Earthdata Forum
Last Updated	November 5, 2026, 08:38 (UTC)
Created	April 1, 2025, 16:41 (UTC)
Identifier	10.5067/ALTCY-TJA52
Modified	2026-11-02T22:15:59Z
Theme	{"Earth Science"}
accessLevel	public
bureauCode	{026:00}
catalog_conformsTo	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id	3c668e7f-c96d-434a-a9c4-83c07f9640fb
harvest_source_id	b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title	Science Discovery Engine
license	https://www.usa.gov/government-works
programCode	{026:000}
publisher	NASA/GSFC/SED/ESD;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
resource-type	Dataset
source_datajson_identifier	true
source_hash	a9eed44b12bceb1d73c9415d6a1b01bd9116cdcea83720c50f7e65772f2c1c4f
source_schema_version	1.1
spatial	["CARTESIAN", [{"NorthBoundingCoordinate": 66, "WestBoundingCoordinate": -180, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -66}]]
temporal	1992-09-25/2026-11-02