File Formats
We have defined standard file formats to simplify data collection. If there is a standard format for the basic or optional experiment you are participating in, please only submit data using this format. Data submitted using other formats cannot be accepted.
1. Time-series of mass change
The file format is comma separated, ASCII.
The file should contain nine columns of information, each row detailing the Participant Surname, the Experiment Group name (Altimetry, Gravimetry, or Mass Budget), the Drainage Region Set employed (Rignot or Zwally), the Drainage Region ID (see below), the Drainage Region Area (in square kilometers), the Drainage Region Area Observed by your satellite dataset (in square kilometers), the Date for each entry in your time series (in decimal years), the Relative Mass Change for each entry in your time series (in gigatons), and the Relative Mass Change Uncertainty for each entry in your time series (in gigatons).
For the Zwally drainage region set, ID’s are numeric in the range 1 to 27 (Antarctica) and 1.1 to 8.2 (Greenland). For the Rignot drainage region set, ID’s are alphabetical in the range “A-Ap” to “K-A” (Antarctica) and “CW” to SW” (Greenland). Results computed within ice sheet boundaries should be labelled “APIS” (Antarctic Peninsula”, “EAIS” (East Antarctica), “WAIS” (West Antarctica), and “GRIS” (Greenland). Full details of the region names can be found here.
If you are submitting results for multiple drainage sets, drainage basin, or ice sheet areas, please concatenate these into a single file.
An example data file can be found here.
2. Rates of mass change
The file format is comma separated, ascii.
The file should contain ten columns of information, each row detailing the Participant Surname, the Experiment Group name (Altimetry, Gravimetry, or Mass Budget), the Drainage Region Set employed (Rignot or Zwally), the Drainage Region ID (see below), the Drainage Region Area (in square kilometres), the Drainage Region Area Observed by your satellite dataset (in square kilometres), the Start Date for each of interval in your mass trend time series (in decimal years), the End Date for each interval in your mass trend time series (in decimal years), the Rate of Mass Change for each interval in your mass trend time series (in gigatons per year), and the Rate of Mass Change Uncertainty for each interval in your mass trend time series (in gigatons per year).
For the Zwally drainage region set, ID’s are numeric in the range 1 to 27 (Antarctica) and 1.1 to 8.2 (Greenland). For the Rignot drainage region set, ID’s are alphabetical in the range “A-Ap” to “K-A” (Antarctica) and “CW” to SW” (Greenland).Results computed within ice sheet boundaries should be labelled “APIS” (Antarctic Peninsula”, “EAIS” (East Antarctica), “WAIS” (West Antarctica), and “GRIS” (Greenland). Full details of the region names can be found here.
If you are submitting results for multiple drainage sets, drainage basin, or ice sheet areas, please concatenate these into a single file.
An example data file can be found here.