Distributed data processing levels  are the daily trajectory summary (l2p) and weekly/monthly gridded data (l3c). The content of products based on the near-real time and reprocessed input version are identical and marked by the timeliness tag in the filename and global attributes of the netCDF files.










NetCDF File Format

Data in netCDF format is self describing and bundles geophysical variables as well as metadata in a file format that can be easily read by different programming languagues and tools. We use v4 of the netCDF format that supports compression of its content to minimize file sizes.

Global Attributes

The global attributes of the netCDF file provide metadata such as citation, reference, time coverage and more. Use ncinfo filename.nc or tools like panoply to list the global attributes.






L2P Trajectory

The Level-2 pre-processed (l2p) product contains daily  information from CryoSat-2 at full resolution (see documentation).

Filenaming

The filename of l2p data indicated the timelines (nrt or ntc) and the date (e.g. 20181001) of the data file:

awi-siral-l2p-sithick-cryosat2-{timeliness}-nh-{year}{month}{day}-f{version}.nc







L3C Grid

The Level-3 collated (l2p) product contains information from CryoSat-2 at a space-time grid (see documentation).

Filenaming

The filename of l2p data follows the pattern:

awi-siral-l3c-sithick-cryosat2-{timeliness}-{grid_id}-{period}-f{version}.nc

with:

tagmeaningexamples
timeliness
The timeliness of the CryoSat-2 input data
nrt, ntc
grid_id
An identifier string that describes the characteristics of the grid. Usually indicates the hemisphere, spatial resolution and projection of the grid.
nh_25km_ease2
period
A string that either indicates the period or the range of time coverage. E.g. yyyymm for monthly, or start to end separated by "_" with start and end in format of yyyymmdd.
201804, 20180101_20180107 


version
Algorithm version str
v2p6