Available High-Resolution Topography and Bathymetry Data Sets
What data are available, and where can background information be found about the data processing?
Jaison Kruian contributed this note about data sources and an article discussing available data. (November 2006)
There is an article in Marine Geophysical Researches, by Marks andSmith on "An Evaluation of Publicly Available Global Bathymetry Grids" (see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11001-005-2095-4) (Volume 27, Number 1, 2006,DOI 10.1007/s11001-005-2095-4) which talks about Etopo2, GEBCO and fewother datasets. This is an excellent article to read if you are interested in fine resolution bathymetry. Understanding how data is processed and put onto gridsis important when choosing which data set to use.
Regarding the topography/coastline datasets, a number of high-resolution datasets are available. There are datasets like GEBCO, Etopo2 and GLOBE (only land elevation) which have resolutions of 1 Minutes, 2 Minutes and 1 Km respectively. Here is a list of freely available global datasets. As others become available, or if readers know of further sources, you are urged to contact the Ferret developers with that information at the Ferret "Contact Us" link.
Please note that the ocean topography or land elevation datasets can be used to create new coastline datasets (extracting lat & lon for zero depth/elevation) but read the dataset documentation, especially about the data processing, to determine how reliable coastline data will be when derived like this.
List of free, Global, Ocean Topography/Land Elevation/Coastline/River datasets
Ocean Topography
Land Elevation
Ridge Bathymetry
Coastline/Shoreline Data
Political/International/Internal Boundaries
Rivers
Where to look for more information?
You can also check:
More about Etopo2
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- Dataset Name: Smith and Sandwell and Etopo2
- Resolution: 2 Minute
- Source: NOAA NGDC: See Bathymetry and Global Relief
- Data format: NetCDF
- Also, the Smith-Sandwell dataset incorporates NGDC data, please see
- http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/pmel/thredds/dodsC/data/PMEL/smith_sandwell_topo_v8_2.nc (OPeNDAP)
The documentations for this dataset: http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/LAS_docFiles/smith_sandwell_v8_2.html
- http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/pmel/thredds/dodsC/data/PMEL/smith_sandwell_topo_v8_2.nc (OPeNDAP)
- Dataset Name: Etopo5
- Resolution: 5 Minute
- Source: NOAA NGDC: See Bathymetry and Global Relief
- Data format: NetCDF
- On the Web
- Dataset Name: General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO)
- Resolution: 1 Minute
- Source: BODC
- Data Format: NetCDF (274 MB zip file)
- Note: Though this dataset is 1 Minute resolution, it misses features which the lower-resolution ETOPO2 captures, due to over smoothing. See the following link for a comparison: http://vterrain.org/Elevation/Bathy/bathy_comp.html
-
- Dataset Name: GLOBE
- Resolution: 1 Km, Gridded
- Source: NOAA NGDC
- Data format: NetCDF
- On the Web
- Note: Etopo2 and Etopo5 (see above) also have land elevation.
-
- Dataset Name: Ridgembs Relational Database
- Resolution: Variable, can be as high as 50 m where data exists.No global coverage (wherever data is not available, Etopo2 is used as a regional background map).
- Source: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (together with RIDGE & NSF)
- Data Format: NetCDF/ASCII
- On the Web
-
- Dataset Names:
- NOAA/NOS Medium resolution coastline, 1:70,000
- World Vector Shoreline, 1:250,000
- World Data Bank II, 1:2,000,000
- World Coast Line, 1:5,000,000
- Resolution: .....
- Data Format: ASCII
- Source: NOAA NGDC
- On the Web
- Note: There is a Ferret FAQ about "Detailed Coastlines and Borders" at http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/FAQ/graphics/coastlines.html which describes how to use the data from this source for drawing borders in Ferret.
- Dataset Names:
-
- Dataset Names:
- World Data Bank II Political boundaries
- World Data Bank II International Boundaries
- World Data Bank II Internal Boundaries
- World Vector Shoreline & All political boundaries
- Resolution: .....
- Data Format: ASCII
- Source: NOAA NGDC
- On the Web:
- Dataset Names:
-
- Dataset Name: World Data Bank II Rivers
- Resolution: .....
- Data Format: ASCII
- Source: NOAA NGDC
- On the Web
- Note: Again see the Ferret FAQ about "Detailed Coastlines and Borders" at http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/FAQ/graphics/coastlines.html which describes how to use the data from this source for drawing rivers in Ferret.
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- http://topex.ucsd.edu/WWW_html/srtm30_plus.html
- http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/abyss/documents/HOTSWG3.3.pdf : Bathymetry from Space: White paper in support of a high-resolution, ocean altimeter mission.
- CleanTOPO2: CleanTOPO2 is a touched up and generalized version of SRTM30 Plus, a public domain dataset that combines sea floor and land elevation data of the entire world. On the Web: http://www.shadedrelief.com
General Notes about sites listed above
- With dss.ucar and bodc.ac.uk you have to create an account (it is free) in order to download datasets. While creating account with bodc.ac.uk,keep the final page where the verification code is to be pasted as it is, and wait for a mail from bodc. Once you get the mail copy and paste the verification code into the box provided.
- Citations for above datasets are available/mentioned in the respective web pages.
Names marked as (OPeNDAP) can be accessed via OPeNDAP, using Ferret, e.g.yes? USE "http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/pmel/thredds/dodsC/data/PMEL/smith_sandwell_topo.nc"