CNES / AVISO+ (produced with CLS and LEGOS)
AVISO reference global mean sea level from satellite altimetry
Global mean sea level anomaly (metres) from the reference altimetry missions TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3 and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, about every 10 days from January 1993, over roughly 66°S to 66°N. Corrected for glacial isostatic adjustment, with annual and semi-annual signals removed and a 2-month filter applied. The TXT has no header: decimal year, GMSL (m) and the uncertainty envelope (m). The newest rows are revised as the filter updates. AVISO's own rate, 3.6 mm per year (±0.3, 90% confidence) "from 1999", is a published statement on the product page; any rate we compute is ours and is labelled as such. The licence forbids re-hosting the unmodified file, so only derived values are published.
Numbers published from it
Licence and credit
- What the terms say
“This is a distinct license — the AVISO License — that CNES has designed to give users CC-BY-like freedoms (use, share, adapt, including for commercial purposes) while retaining one CNES-specific condition on bulk/operational redistribution of the original data, described in Section 3.2 below.”
From the producer's terms, checked 2026-10-04; re-checked automatically every week.
- Credit we give
- AVISO Global Mean Sea Level Indicator (CNES, CLS), doi:10.24400/527896/AVISO-2025.010; credits EU Copernicus Marine Service/CNES/LEGOS/CLS, https://aviso.altimetry.fr/msl, accessed {date_accessed}. Licence: AVISO License Agreement Issue 20, https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/documents/data/License_Aviso_ini.pdf
- Copy of the raw file
- Not allowed: we keep a private copy for our own checks and publish its fingerprint.
- Cite as
- CNES, & CLS. (2026). AVISO Global Mean Sea Level Indicator [Dataset]. CNES. https://doi.org/10.24400/527896/AVISO-2025.010. Credits: EU Copernicus Marine Service/CNES/LEGOS/CLS, https://aviso.altimetry.fr/msl
Files
Space-separated, no header: decimal year, GMSL anomaly (m), uncertainty envelope (m). GIA-adjusted, annual and semi-annual signals removed, 2-month filter. 1,236 rows from 1993.011795 on 2026-10-04.
https://data.aviso.altimetry.fr/aviso-gateway/data/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_AVISO_GIA_Adjust_Filter2m.txtThe same series as NetCDF (variables time, cycle, msl, uncertainty_envelop, amr_correction, TPA_correction), with the DOI, creation date (history), end_date and mission list in its global attributes; the vintage comes from here.
https://data.aviso.altimetry.fr/aviso-gateway/data/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_AVISO_GIA_Adjust_Filter2m.ncAVISO's Mean Sea Level product page, kept for its stated rate and acceleration (the published-value headline) and its notes on processing changes.
https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/en/data/products/ocean-indicators-products/mean-sea-level.html
Status
- Programme
- Rolling updates every few weeks: the files of 3 October 2026 (NetCDF created 26 September 2026) run to mid-August 2026. The page lists the switch to the L2P-DT-2024 upstream data in June 2025 and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich from January 2023. Produced in France by CNES, CLS and LEGOS.
- Updates
- Every few weeks (rolling; the newest rows are revised)
- Last check
- Unchanged since the last fetch (2026-10-05T11:02:15Z)
- Independent sources measuring the same thing
- NASA-SSH global mean sea level from simple gridded sea surface height