We are pleased to inform you that the Jason-3 GDR standard will upgrade to GDR-F on 2020 October, 29th

GDR-F will become the operational baseline standard for Jason-3 OGDR and IGDR (from cycle 174 onwards) and GDR (from cycle 171 onwards) 
The Jason-3 GDR-F standard, following OSTST recommendations, includes many improvements compared with the previous GDR-D Standard among which :

• Updated orbit model POE-F
• Updated geophysical corrections:
  • FES2014 & GOT4.10 ocean tide models
  • CNES/CLS 2015 and DTU 2018 Mean Sea Surface
  • CNES/CLS 2018 Mean Dynamic Topography model
  • New Wet & dry tropospheric model correction based on 3D ECMWF fields
  • New Atmospheric Attenuation model correction based on 3D ECMWF fields
  • S. Desai pole tide with 2017 IERS linear mean pole
  • 3-Parameter SSB (SWH, wind and swell)
  • Smoothed ionospheric bifrequency correction
• Data referenced wrt WGS84
• New geophysical corrections:
  • E. Zaron internal tide model
  • Sandwell & Smith Global Slope Correction
• A new ssha formula : substraction of Internal Tides & Non-equilibrium Ocean Tides
• A new AMR calibration that references the absolute calibration that we expect to receive from Sentinel-6
• A new retracking at GDR level : Adaptive retracking
• A new waveform classification based on neural network
• New additional fields :
  • Coastal distance
  • OISST 
  • OSISAF ice concentration
  • MFWAM swell period & direction
  • Jason-CS/Sentinel6 rain flag approach
• A new way to take into account the instrumental filter calibration (CAL2)
• A large renaming of NetCDF variables, use of NetCDF groups (reconciliation with S6/JCS format)
• NetCDF-4/HDF5 classic model format with native compression

The user documentation (User Product Description and Handbook) are available on AVISO+ website :

• hdbk_j3_GDR_F.pdf
• product_description_j3.pdf 

Samples of GDR-F files are available on AVISO+ ftp
This modification concerns the Native products as well as the Sensor products (SGDRs) and the Reduced products (GDR-SSHA)
Note that the GDR-F standard has no backward compatibility with GDR-D, due to variables renaming and the use of NetCDF groups.
After the standard switch, a double standard production “GDR-D” and “GDR-F” will be mainted during three months at IGDR and GDR levels.
The whole lifetime of Jason-3 data will be reprocessed with GDR-F standard, delivery is scheduled April 2021.
The Jason-2 reprocessing at GDR-F standard is scheduled end 2021.
Please, feel free to contact us for any question (aviso@altimetry.fr).
François Bignalet-Cazalet, on behalf of the Jason-3 GDR-F Team