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Abstract

The data set provides GFZ VER13 orbits of altimetry satellites: ERS-1 (August 1, 1991 - July 5, 1996), ERS-2 (May 13, 1995 - February 27, 2006), Envisat (April 12, 2002 - April 8, 2012), TOPEX/Poseidon (September 23, 1992 - October 8, 2005), Jason-1 (January 13, 2002 - July 5, 2013) and Jason-2 (July 5, 2008 - April 5, 2015) derived at the time spans given at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences (Potsdam, Germany) within the Sea Level phase 2 project of the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative using "Earth Parameter and Orbit System - Orbit Computation (EPOS-OC)" software (Zhu et al., 2004) and the Altimeter Database and processing System (ADS, http://adsc.gfz-potsdam.de/ads/) developed at GFZ. The orbits were computed in the ITRF2014 terrestrial reference frame for all satellites using common, most precise models and standards available and described below. The ERS-1 orbit is computed using satellite laser ranging (SLR) and altimeter crossover data, while the ERS-2 orbit is derived using additionally Precise Range And Range-rate Equipment (PRARE) measurements. The Envisat, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, and Jason-2 orbits are based on Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) and SLR observations. For Envisat, altimeter crossover data were used additionally at 44 of 764 orbital arcs with gaps in SLR and DORIS data. The orbit files are available in the Extended Standard Product 3 Orbit Format (SP3-c). Files are gzip-compressed. File names are given as sate_YYYYMMDD_SP3C.gz, where "sate" is the abbreviation (ENVI, ERS1, ERS2, JAS1, JAS2, TOPX) of the satellite name, YYYY stands for 4-digit year, MM for month and DD for day of the beginning of the file. More details on these orbits are provided in Rudenko et al. (2018) to which these orbits are supplementary material.