File Formats
We have defined standard file formats to simplify data collection. 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 kilometres), the Drainage Region Area Observed by your satellite dataset (in square kilometres), 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), ‘AIS’ (Antarctica), and ‘GRIS’ (Greenland). Full details of the regions names can be found here.
If you are submitting results for multiple drainage sets, drainage basins, or ice sheet areas, please concatenate these into a single file. If you provide time-series over all the basins that make up an ice sheet, please also provide the total mass change for the corresponding ice sheet in the concatenated file.
An example data file can be found here.
2. Rates of mass change
Please provide discrete rates of mass change (no overlapping time intervals) at the finest temporal resolution afforded by your dataset, preferably over annual epochs or finer temporal duration. If you submit annual rates of mass change, please provide summer-centred rates.
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 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 Uncertainty for each entry 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), ‘AIS’ (Antarctica), and ‘GRIS’ (Greenland). Full details of the regions names can be found here.
If you are submitting results for multiple drainage sets, drainage basins, or ice sheet areas, please concatenate these into a single file. If you provide rates of mass change over all the basins that make up an ice sheet, please also provide the rates of total mass change for the corresponding ice sheet in the concatenated file.
An example data file can be found here.