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Description

The monthly land mass grids contain water mass anomalies given as equivalent water thickness derived from GRACE & GRACE-FO time-variable gravity observations during the specified timespan, and relative to the specified time-mean reference period. The Equivalent water thickness represents the total terrestrial water storage anomalies from soil moisture, snow, surface water (incl. rivers, lakes, reservoirs etc.), as well as groundwater and aquifers. A glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) correction has been applied, and standard corrections for geocenter (degree-1), C20 (degree-20) and C30 (degree-30) are incorporated. Post-processing filters have been applied to reduce correlated errors. Version 04 (v04) of the terrestrial water storage data uses updated and consistent C20 and Geocenter corrections (i.e., Technical Notes TN-14 and TN-13), as well as an ellipsoidal correction to account for the non-spherical shape of the Earth when mapping gravity anomalies to surface mass change. Data grids are provided in ASCII/netCDF/GeoTIFF formats. For the RL06 version, all GRACE products in the ASCII format have adopted the YAML encoding header, which is in full compliance with the PODAAC metadata best practices.

Product Summary

Platforms
GRACE
Spatial Extent

N: 89.5 S: -89.5 E: 180 W: -180

Spatial Resolution
1 Decimal Degrees x 1 Decimal Degrees
Geographic Region
GLOBAL
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
CARTESIAN
Temporal Extent
2002-04-04 to 2017-10-18
Data Partner
GRACE Tellus, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (NASA/JPL/GRACE-TELLUS-0001) ,
Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (NASA/JPL/PODAAC)
Concept ID
C2077042612-POCLOUD
Data State
COMPLETE
Number of Files/Granules
163
Processing Level
3
Published
Updated
Science Keywords
Terrestrial Water Storage

Citation

Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.

Copy Citation

NASA/JPL. (2021). JPL TELLUS GRACE Level-3 Monthly Land Water-Equivalent-Thickness Surface Mass Anomaly Release 6.0 version 04 in netCDF/ASCII/GeoTIFF Formats [Data set]. NASA Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/TELND-3AJ64 Date Accessed: 2025-12-14

Documents

Variables

Variables are a set of physical properties whose values determine the characteristics or behavior of something. For example, temperature and pressure are variables of the atmosphere. Parameters and variables can be used interchangeably. Variable level attributes provide individual information for each variable.

The Name in this table is the variable name. Fill value indicates missing or undefined data points in a variable. Valid range is the range of values the variable can store. Scale factor is used to increase or decrease the size of an object and can be used to correct for distortion. For questions on a specific variable, please use the Earthdata Forum.

Name Description Units Data Type Fill Value Valid Range Scale Factor
lat latitude value at each pixel degrees_north double N/A -89.5 to 89.5 1
lat_bounds latitude values at the north and south bounds of each pixel degrees_north double N/A N/A 1
lon longitude value at each pixel degrees_east double N/A 0.5 to 359.5 1
lon_bounds longitude values at the west and east bounds of each pixel degrees_east double N/A N/A 1
lwe_thickness none m double -99999 -30 to 30 1
time time days since 2002-01-01T00:00:00 double N/A N/A 1
time_bounds time bounds for each time value, i.e., the first day and last day included in the monthly solution days since 2002-01-01T00:00:00 double N/A N/A 1
uncertainty none m double -99999 -30 to 30 1
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