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Full catalog/TELLUS_GRAC_L3_CSR_RL06_OCN_v04
TELLUS_GRAC_L3_CSR_RL06_OCN_v04·vRL06v04·dataset

Monthly changes in ocean-bottom pressure (GRACE)

CSR TELLUS GRACE Level-3 Monthly Ocean Bottom Pressure Anomaly Release 6.0 version 04
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 3 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly changes in the pressure at the bottom of the ocean, expressed as how much the equivalent depth of water above each spot rose or fell, reflecting shifts in the mass of water and air over the sea.

How it's made. Derived from the GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites, which sense Earth's gravity changes from space; the readings are corrected and smoothed and offered as monthly grids in several formats.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists study how ocean and atmosphere processes move mass around the globe and how ocean circulation and sea level change over time.

What's measured

OCEANS › OCEAN PRESSURE › OCEAN BOTTOM PRESSURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-04-04 → 2017-10-25
  • Measured byGRACE
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -89.5, 180, 89.5
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
  • Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
  • Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description

The monthly ocean bottom pressure anomaly grids are given as equivalent water thickness changes derived from GRACE & GRACE-FO time-variable gravity observations during the specified timespan, and relative to the specified time-mean reference period. The Equivalent water thickness represent 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). The Level-2 GAD product has been added back, 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 (i.e., de-striping and spatial smoothing) 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. Data grids are provided in ASCII/netCDF/GeoTIFF formats. For the RL06 version, all GRACE products in the ASCII format have adopted the YAML encoding header, which is in full compliance with the PODAAC metadata best practices.

Get the data

tellus_grac_l3_csr_rl06_ocn_v04_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="TELLUS_GRAC_L3_CSR_RL06_OCN_v04",
    version="RL06v04",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from POCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.