NASA-SSH Along-Track Sea Surface Height from Standardized Reference Missions Version 1.1

The NASA-SSH Along-Track Sea Surface Height from Standardized Reference Missions Version 1.1 dataset produced by NASA provide observations of sea surface height, or sea level, anomaly measured using radar altimeter satellites in the reference mission orbit. These include TOPEX/Poseidon, the Jason series, and Sentinel-6. The data begin in Oct 1992, with data from TOPEX/Poseidon, and continues to the present. In this data set all missions have been referenced to a common baseline, additional quality control has been performed, and errors with wavelengths around one orbital cycle have been reduced.

The data consist of along-track observations of sea surface height, collected approximately once per second (1 Hz), and are parsed into files containing one day’s worth of data per file. A flag variable is included to allow users to easily select only valid observations, and a variable containing sea surface height with the flag applied and a small amount along track smoothing (~20 km), is suggested for most users.

Additionally, a “basin” flag variable is provided, along with a table defining it. This allows users to easily select all observations from a specific body of water. The basin flag assigns a number to each point corresponding to a specific ocean basin or lake. A table is included with a text description of each basin number. A text version of that table, and the basin definitions as a shape file or as a kml file can be downloaded from the associated documentation.

New data will be released approximately once per week, with a latency of a few weeks.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated November 3, 2026, 05:20 (UTC)
Created June 3, 2026, 02:24 (UTC)
Identifier 10.5067/NSREF-AT0V11
Modified 2026-10-26T22:16:12Z
Theme {"Earth Science"}
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 2b7c281b-05e0-425c-8f61-da6a096f6b88
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/JPL/PODAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 8619cc72014c98906991b2a977840558c355a3b6e1f2cc01d4f16bc1c2add567
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"NorthBoundingCoordinate": 90, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -90, "WestBoundingCoordinate": -180, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180}]]
temporal 1992-10-25/2026-10-26