Source/Sensor: Radar Altimeter, 13.8 GHz, KU Band

Coverage: Apr 29, 1995 to Aug 30, 2003, Global Oceans

Abstract: The list under General Information applies to all Altimeter Ocean Pathfinder data sets which PO.DAAC is providing. For example, when referencing "Description of Sea Surface Height Data", you will find links to TOPEX/POSEIDON, ERS1, ERS2, and GFO.

The European Remote Sensing Satellite, ERS-2, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), is a follow-on mission to ERS-1. It was launched on Apr 21, 1995 in a sun-synchronous circular orbit with an inclination of 98.5^o, thus making it a retrograde orbit. Its altitude was 785 Km. Unlike ERS-1, which had many phases consising of different repeat orbits, ERS-2 was placed in a 35 day repeat orbit, same as ERS-1 Phases C and G. Data Coverage is global ocean and coastal regions from 81.5^o south to 81.5^o north latitude.

The Production History provides a chronology of the current and previous versions of this product. The Data Editing gives criteria used in deriving the sea surface height.

Data Set Volume: The data on the PO.DAAC ftp site are gzipped and the volume is approximately 282.7 MBytes. Unzipped volume is approximately 732.9 MBytes.

Anonymous FTP Site: podaac.jpl.nasa.gov

Directory: ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/sea_surface_height/altimeter_ocean_pathfinder/ers2_v54

Smallest Order: One file containing cycles 1-78.

Standard Product:Gzipped files on ftp. See README.

Formats: Unix byte order, binary data. Data Organization