GLOBE (Global Land One-km Base Elevation)

Description

GLOBE is an international effort to create a global digital elevation model (DEM) on a nominal 1-kilometer grid. Data from a variety of sources was compiled and independently peer-reviewed to provide 30 arcsecond grid spacing, which corresponds to approximately one kilometer near the equator. GLOBE Version 1.0 was completed and released in 1999. GLOBE is an activity of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), and is part of Focus 1 of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme's Data and Information System (IGBP-DIS).

GLOBE coverage is divided into sixteen tiles. Each tile spans 90 degrees of longitude has 10800 columns. Tiles bordering the equator span 50 degrees of latitude and have 6000 rows, while the remaining tiles span 40 degrees and have 4800 rows. Elevation data is stored as signed 2-byte integers in flat binary (row major) files with the LSB (least significant byte first) byte order and units of meters. Header files for several formats are also available. Bathymetric data is not yet included but is planned for a future version of GLOBE.

Note - During the creation of the GLOBE data set, another global, 30-arcsecond elevation data set called GTOPO30 was also created, but the two projects differ in a variety of ways.

Data Source

National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Data Availability

The GLOBE data set is available online from NOAA/NGDC and on a collection of CD-ROMs.

Web Sites

Main page: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/topo/globe.html

Documentation: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/topo/report/index.html

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