Data We Use

ECCO: Integrating Ocean & Ice
ECCO: Integrating Ocean & Ice

ECCO state estimates faithfully reproduce a large number of ocean and sea ice observations from in situ and satellite instruments. We assimilate and constrain hundreds of millions of individual data from many sources.

The best part? Our solutions satisfy the laws of physics and thermodynamics.

We estimate all of the fields needed to evolve the ocean state over time. This includes temperature and salinity plus 3D momentum, sea surface height, density, ocean bottom pressure, sea ice, and snow. But it’s not all about the ocean and ice, the ECCO solution also includes estimates of the atmospheric state every six hours for the last few decades.

Observational Data Used to Constrain the Model

[New or updated items for ECCO Version 4 release 4 are indicated in
purple
.]
Variable Observations
Sea surface height ERS-1/2 (1992-2001), TOPEX/Poseidon (1993-2005), GFO (2001-2007), ENVISAT (2002-2012), Jason-1 (2002-2008), Jason-2 (2008-
2017
), CryoSat-2 (2011-
2017
), SARAL/AltiKa (2013-
2017
),
Jason-3 (2016-2017)
Global mean sea level Average of mean sea level curves from AVISO, CSIRO, NOAA and U.Colorado (1993-
2017
)
In situ temperature Argo floats (1995-
2017
), CTDs (1992-
2017
), XBTs (1992-
2017
), marine mammals (APB 2004-
2017
),
gliders (2003-2017),
Ice-Tethered Profilers (ITP, 2004-
2017
),
moorings (1992-2017)
In situ salinity CTDs (1992-
2017)
, moorings (1992-
2017
), Argo floats (1997-
2017
),
gliders (2003-2017),
marine mammals (APB 2004-
2017
), ITP (2004-
2017
)
Sea surface temperature AVHRR (1992-
2017)
Sea surface salinity Aquarius (2011-
2015)
Sea-ice concentration SSM/I (1992-2009), SSMIS (2006-
2017)
Ocean bottom pressure GRACE (2002-
2016
), JPL MASCON Solution
T and S climatology World Ocean Atlas 2009
Mean dynamic topography
DTU17MDT