Sea Level Change Data Resources

NASA and its partner agencies have been measuring changing sea levels for over 28 years. By combining satellite altimetry ocean surface topography measurements with in situ, field campaign and model data, scientists have increased our understanding of both regional and global sea level change over time, and its impact on both weather and climate.

According to the United Nations, 40% of the world's population lives within 100 km of a coast, meaning that close to three billion people could be impacted by changes in sea level. Data from NASA's Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) Integrated Multi-Mission Ocean Altimeter Data for Climate Research (September 1992 to present) shows that the global mean sea level is increasing at about 3.3 millimeters per year (mm/y). Rising sea levels can have catastrophic effects in coastal communities through flooding, erosion, and storm-related hazards.

Data Pathfinder

This pathfinder is directed toward resource managers, decision makers, and anyone interested in using NASA data to monitor changes in sea level. This pathfinder directs users to NASA datasets that can aid in monitoring changes in glaciers, ice sheets, ocean processes, land water storage, vertical land motion, and glacial isostatic adjustment as contributors to a changing sea level. The pathfinder also provides access to datasets for monitoring the impacts of and the risk of coastal communities to sea level change.

Data Toolkit (coming soon)

This data toolkit is designed to support sea level change research by providing easy access to data, services and tools and other data resources for the following topics related to sea level change: Ocean Processes, Glaciers and Ice Sheets, Land Water Storage, and Vertical Land Motion.

Articles and Data User Profiles

Along with all the great data freely available through EOSDIS DAACs, there are dozens of Earthdata articles that provide a wealth of background about sea level change, missions collecting data related to sea level change, and profiles of scientists and researchers using NASA EOSDIS data to explore elements of sea level change.

Webinars

The NASA Earthdata data discovery and data access webinars span the Earth science disciplines and are designed to help users learn about NASA EOSDIS data, services and tools and show users how to work with these data resources.

• NASA PO.DAAC's State of the Ocean: I spy with my little eye something
• Explore, Access, and Customize ICESat-2 data at NASA's NSIDC DAAC
• Discovering and Differentiating Data with NSIDC DAAC's Search
• Operation IceBridge Come Discover a Decade of Polar Data
• Introduction to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Data
• Applications of SAR Data in GIS Environments
• Don't Pass the Salt! NASA's Salinity Mission Continues with SMAP
• Goodbye FTP, New Ways to Access Physical Oceanography Data at NASA's PO.DAAC
• Making Waves: PO.DAAC’s Journey from Servers to a Cloud Environment
• Easy Sentinel-1 Radiometric Terrain Corrected (RTC) Products with ASF DAAC's Toolbox
• Discover and Access SAR data with ASF DAAC's Vertex- Better, Stronger, Faster

Data Recipes and Tutorials

Data recipes are tutorials that include step-by-step instructions to help users learn how to discover, access, subset, visualize and use Earth science data, information, tools, and services. These tutorials cover many different data products across the Earth science disciplines and different data discovery and data access tools, including programming languages and related software.

• Data Recipes at the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC)
• Data Recipes at the National Snow and Ice Data Center DAAC (NSIDC DAAC)
• Data Recipes at the Alaska Satellite Facility DAAC (ASF DAAC)