Global sea surface height from reference satellites only

The NASA-SSH Simple Gridded Sea Surface Height from Standardized Reference Missions Only Version 1 dataset produced by NASA provides 2-D maps of sea surface height, or sea level, anomaly once every 7 days. The grids are based on observations of sea surface height from the radar altimeter satellites in the reference mission orbits, including TOPEX/Poseidon, the Jason series, and Sentinel-6. The data begin in Oct 1992 and continue through the present. They are created using the NASA-SSH Along-Track Sea Surface Height from Standardized Reference Missions Version 1 dataset. The grids consist of 10-days worth of observations, which covers approximately 1 complete repeat cycle of observations from the reference missions. The grids are produced on a 0.5-degree latitude and longitude grid, by taking a simple gaussian weighted spatial average with a width of 100 km. The grids are produced every 7 days to allow for easy interpolation in time. However, since they are created using 10-days of data, there is some overlap of information between adjacent time steps. The grids are also created using the basin flags to avoid mixing data from distinct ocean basins (for example, to avoid mixing observations from the Caribbean Sea with observations from the Pacific across the Isthmus of Panama). Connected basins are allowed to share data, however. This is accomplished by using a table of connections between basins. The basin connection table is available (https://archive.podaac.earthdata.nasa.gov/podaac-ops-cumulus-docs/web-misc/nasa-ssh/basin_connection_table.txt). The basin definitions can be downloaded as a shape file from https://archive.podaac.earthdata.nasa.gov/podaac-ops-cumulus-docs/web-misc/nasa-ssh/basin_polygon_files.tar.gz, or as a kml file https://archive.podaac.earthdata.nasa.gov/podaac-ops-cumulus-docs/web-misc/nasa-ssh/NASA-SSH_Basins.kmz. A new grid will be released approximately once per week, with a latency of a few weeks.