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Jason-3 Wet Path Delay Correction

Metadata Updated: July 10, 2025

This dataset provides supplementary wet tropospheric corrections for historical Jason-3 observations (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/archive/accession/Jason3-xGDR). Recent assessments of the global sea level budget have resulted in increased scrutiny of estimates of global sea level change based on Jason-3. After a careful assessment of the wet tropospheric correction derived from the Advanced Microwave Radiometer (AMR) instrument, it was determined that further improvements to the accuracy of the historical Jason-3 observations could be made. Since this assessment was only completed after Jason-3 data was reprocessed to GDR-F (Geophysical Data Record – Version F) standards, it was not included in the GDR-F product release. For this reason, this supplementary correction product has been created using the method of Brown et al. (2012) to allow users to correct path delay and sea surface height observations, reducing errors in estimates of global sea level change by 2-3 mm over 8 years.The correction was computed based on comparison of the AMR-observed brightness temperatures with independent satellite observations from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMI), F16, F17 and F18, Fundamental Climate Data Records. SSMI data was obtained from the NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of SSMIS Microwave Brightness Temperatures, RSS Version 8 (Wentz et al., 2019, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/metadata/geoportal/rest/metadata/item/gov.noaa.ncdc:C01567/html). The method described in Brown et al. (2012) to map SSMI Brightness Temperatures to AMR equivalent brightness temperatures (TBs) was used. Although it was found that it made little difference to the result, a bias was removed between SSMI equivalent AMR TBs and AMR TBs with respect to latitude for all data prior to computing temporal trends. In addition, only rain free, mostly clear data (TB18.7 GHz < 160K) data were considered.The correction is supplied on a pass-by-pass basis in a 4-column text file. See the product documentation for guidance on how to apply it to Jason-3 observations.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date July 10, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date July 10, 2025
Publisher NASA/JPL/PODAAC;NASA/JPL
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/J3L2G-PDCOR
Data Last Modified 2025-07-09
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id bc135ce6-dc41-4877-9de6-9a5de83729e3
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Old Spatial "GEODETIC",{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":66.0,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-66.0}
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash cca4316414a2133d5935213599c7d582e4ad67c45ef75df141e9fcae3a497e88
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial

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