CSR TELLUS GRACE-FO Level-3 Monthly Ocean Bottom Pressure Anomaly Release 6.2 version 04

This TELLUS_GRFO_L3_CSR_RL06.2_OCN_v04 dataset produced by the CSR GRACE-FO program derives the ocean bottom pressure (OBP) anomaly using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellite data. GRACE-FO was launched on 22 May 2018, and extends the original GRACE mission (2002 – 2017) and expands its legacy of scientific achievements in tracking earth surface mass changes.

The monthly ocean mass grids contain water mass anomalies given as equivalent water thickness derived from GRACE-FO time-variable gravity observations during the specified timespan, and relative to the specified time-mean reference period. The Equivalent water thickness represents sea floor pressure changes due to the integral effect of ocean and atmosphere processes, including global mean ocean bottom pressure changes (mean ocean mass and mean atmosphere mass over the global oceans). A glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) correction has been applied, and standard corrections for geocenter (degree-1), C20 (degree-20) and C30 (degree-30) are incorporated. Post-processing filters have been applied to reduce correlated errors.

Version 04 (v04) of the ocean bottom pressure data uses updated and consistent C20 and Geocenter corrections (i.e., Technical Notes TN-14 and TN-13), as well as an ellipsoidal correction to account for the non-spherical shape of the Earth when mapping gravity anomalies to surface mass change. This RL06.2 is an updated release version of the previous RL06.1. The difference is only in the handling of GPS data set during Level-2 processing. GPS handling for RL06.2 was re-assessed due to steady degradation in low degrees during late 2022 and 2023 in RL06.1. Data grids are provided in ASCII/netCDF/GeoTIFF formats. For the RL06 version and beyond, all GRACE products in ASCII format have adopted the YAML encoding header, which is in full compliance with the PODAAC metadata best practices.