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ocean climate and circulation data
ocean current data
ocean climate and circulation data

ECCO

Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean

NASA’s Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) project supports climate research by providing the scientific community with the best possible multidecadal reconstructions of Earth’s time-evolving full-depth ocean, sea-ice, and atmospheric surface states and their associated fluxes.

ECCO state estimates are multi-platform, multi-instrument, multi-variable synthesis products that integrate global satellite and in-situ ocean and ice observations with coupled ocean/sea-ice models. By construction, ECCO state estimates satisfy the laws of physics and thermodynamics and therefore conserve heat, salt, volume, and momentum. This strict adherence to conservation principles makes ECCO products particularly well-suited for investigations into the origins of observed ocean, sea-ice, and sea-level variability.

Through these and other examples, the ongoing production of ECCO state estimates furthers NASA’s strategic goal to advance understanding of Earth by tracking and characterizing the mechanisms of environmental change.

Data Centers

PO.DAAC
This animation depicts the upper ocean turbulence by rendering the ocean temperature on a cold-warm color palette. Blue represents the colder (denser) water mostly found in the deeper and/or higher latitude oceans. Red represents the warmer sea water found on the upper layers of the ocean. Oceanic fronts, similar to the fronts in the atmosphere that generate strong winds and weather, are formed in the upper ocean when cold and warm waters meet sideways. These fronts and their evolution are associated with strong vertical mixing and transports. The animation is based on a global ocean numerical simulation, the ECCO simulation 1/48 (LLC4320). Credit: NASA’s Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) 

ECCO Products

The latest ECCO “Central Estimate” product (Version 4, Release 4) is comprised of 100+ 3D, 2D, and 1D ocean, sea-ice, and atmospheric surface parameters. These 100+ parameters are grouped into 25+ datasets and provided as both daily and monthly averages on two spatial grids: a 1/2° regular latitude-longitude grid and the “lat-lon-cap 90” (llc90) native model grid. Select parameters are also provided as 1D global-mean time series. Finally, a subset of 3D and 2D parameters are provided as “instantaneous snapshots” to support closed budget analyses. The complete ECCO V4r4 product exceeds 3TB across more than 385,000 granules.

Learn more at the ECCO consortium website.

Related Instruments

Jason-1 Microwave Radiometer NASA's Jason-1 Microwave Radiometer measures atmospheric water vapor content to determine how water vapor impacts radar signal propagation.
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) acquires measurements of temperature, cloud cover, snow and ice cover, soil moisture, and others.
Poseidon-3 (Poseidon-3) Poseidon-3, also known as the Jason-2 Radar Altimeter, measures sea level, wave heights and wind speed.
Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) The Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) instruments estimate atmospheric temperature, moisture, and surface parameters.