The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the public release of the GRACE-FO (GF) Level-2 Monthly Geopotential Spherical Harmonics RL06.1 datasets from the Project Science Data System teams at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), and Center for Space Research (CSR).

This release includes three GRACE-FO Level-2 RL06.1 datasets, which are updated from the previous RL06 datasets (DOI: 10.5067/GFL20-MC060, 10.5067/GFL20-MJ060, and 10.5067/GFL20-MG060). The RL06.1 uses the updated L1B calibration product (ACX) which is an updated hybrid accelerometer-transplant that uses observations from both the GF1 and GF2 accelerometers to reduce measurement errors. This provides improved estimates of non-gravitational forces on GF2, and in turn yields improved quality of the L2/L3 gravity and mass change data products. In addition, the RL06.1 datasets are published directly in Earthdata Cloud with all files uncompressed. Similar to RL06, all the three files are formatted in ASCII with YAML encoding header, in compliance with ACDD-1.3 and CF-1.7 metadata conventions. They are active forward stream data files, and will be updated monthly, or when the new data are appended by the data processing centers.

The dataset is described and discoverable via the PO.DAAC dataset information page. Users are encouraged to use the PO.DAAC data downloader and subscriber to download the data.

Data DOI, long/short name:

1. https://doi.org/10.5067/GFL20-MC061, GRACE-FO Level-2 Monthly Geopotential Spherical Harmonics CSR Release 6.1 (RL06.1) (GRACEFO_L2_CSR_MONTHLY_0061)
2. https://doi.org/10.5067/GFL20-MJ061, GRACE-FO Level-2 Monthly Geopotential Spherical Harmonics JPLRelease 6.1 (RL06.1) (GRACEFO_L2_JPL_MONTHLY_0061)
3. https://doi.org/10.5067/GFL20-MG061, GRACE-FO Level-2 Monthly Geopotential Spherical Harmonics GFZRelease 6.1 (RL06.1) (GRACEFO_L2_GFZ_MONTHLY_0061)

Reference:

Dah-Ning Yuan, 2019, GRACE Follow-On Level-2 Gravity Field Product User Handbook. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL D-103922. https://archive.podaac.earthdata.nasa.gov/podaac-ops-cumulus-docs/gracefo/open/docs/GRACE-FO_L2_UserHandbook.pdf

Comments/Questions? Please contact podaac@podaac.jpl.nasa.gov or visit the PO.DAAC Forum.