The GEBCO_2020 Grid - A continuous terrain model of the global oceans and land

The GEBCO_2020 Grid was released in May 2020 and is the second global bathymetric product released by the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) and has been developed through the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project.



The GEBCO_2020 Grid provides global coverage of elevation data in meters on a 15 arc-second grid of 43200 rows x 86400 columns, giving 3,732,480,000 data points.

Grid Development

The GEBCO_2020 Grid is a continuous, global terrain model for ocean and land with a spatial resolution of 15 arc seconds.

The grid uses as a ‘base’ Version 2 of the SRTM15+ data set (Tozer et al, 2019). This data set is a fusion of land topography with measured and estimated seafloor topography. It is augmented with the gridded bathymetric data sets developed by the four Seabed 2030 Regional Centers.

The Regional Centers have compiled gridded bathymetric data sets, largely based on multibeam data, for their areas of responsibility. These regional grids were then provided to the Global Center.

For areas outside of the polar regions (primarily south of 60°N and north of 50°S), these data sets are in the form of 'sparse grids', i.e. only grid cells that contain data were populated. For the polar regions, complete grids were provided due to the complexities of incorporating data held in polar coordinates.

The compilation of the GEBCO_2020 Grid from these regional data grids was carried out at the Global Center, with the aim of producing a seamless global terrain model.

In contrast to the development of the previous GEBCO grid, GEBCO_2019, the data sets provided as sparse grids by the Regional Centers were included on to the base grid without any blending, i.e. grid cells in the base grid were replaced with data from the sparse grids. This was with aim of avoiding creating edge effects, 'ridges and ripples', at the boundaries between the sparse grids and base grid during the blending process used previously. In addition, this allows a clear identification of the data source within the grid, with no cells being 'blended' values. Routines from Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) system were used to do the merging of the data sets.

For the polar data sets, and the adjoining North Sea area, supplied in the form of complete grids these data sets were included using feather blending techniques from GlobalMapper software version 11.0, made available by Blue Marble Geographic.

The GEBCO_2020 Grid includes data sets from a number of international and national data repositories and regional mapping initiatives. For information on the data sets included in the GEBCO_2020 Grid, please see the list of contributions included in this release of the grid ( https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/gridded_bathymetry_data/gebco_2020/#compilations).

Simple

Date (Publication)
2020-04-30
Date (Creation)
2020-01-01
Citation identifier
DTM_GEBCO_2020
Credit

GEBCO
Status
Completed
Point of contact
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role

Seabed 2030 Global Data Center

gdacc@seabed2030.org

Point of contact

Thèmes Sextant

  • /Physical Environment

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

  • Elevation
Keywords

  • Southern Ocean, Indian Ocean, Arctic Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, World, elevation, oceans

Mission Atlantic - BODC Parameters

  • /Marine geology/Gravity, magnetics and bathymetry

Mission Atlantic - Case Studies

  • Atlantic Ocean

Mission Atlantic - Data type (DMP)

  • Spatial data products

Mission Atlantic - Work Package

  • WP4 Benthic Mapping

  • WP6 Dynamics of ecosystem state and resources

Ocean Hackathon - City and challenge

  • /Boulogne-sur-Mer/BOL05

  • /Boulogne-sur-Mer/BOL01

  • /Boulogne-sur-Mer

  • /Boulogne-sur-Mer/BOL07

  • /Boulogne-sur-Mer/BOL02

  • /Bournemouth/BOR02

  • /Boulogne-sur-Mer/BOL03

  • /Boulogne-sur-Mer/BOL06

  • /Bournemouth/BOR01

  • /Bournemouth/BOR04

  • /Bournemouth

  • /Brest

  • /Brest/BRE02

  • /Bournemouth/BOR07

  • /Bournemouth/BOR05

  • /Brest/BRE01

  • /Brest/BRE04

  • /Cape Town/CAP02

  • /Cape Town/CAP04

  • /Cape Town/CAP03

  • /Cape Town/CAP01

  • /Cherbourg

  • /Cherbourg/CHE03

  • /Brest/BRE09

  • /Cherbourg/CHE01

  • /Concepción

  • /Concepción/CON04

  • /Kuala Lumpur

  • /Brest/BRE08

  • /Concepción/CON03

  • /Concepción/CON05

  • /Concepción/CON06

  • /Cape Town

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL03

  • /Cherbourg/CHE02

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL01

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL07

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL02

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL06

  • /Brest/BRE10

  • /Brest/BRE11

  • /La Rochelle

  • /La Rochelle/LAR02

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL04

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL05

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL10

  • /La Rochelle/LAR01

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL08

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL12

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL09

  • /La Rochelle/LAR03

  • /La Rochelle/LAR05

  • /La Rochelle/LAR06

  • /Kuala Lumpur/KUL11

  • /Nord de la Réunion/REU03

  • /Nord de la Réunion/REU02

  • /Nouméa/NOU06

  • /Nord de la Réunion/REU04

  • /La Rochelle/LAR07

  • /Nord de la Réunion/REU01

  • /Nouméa/NOU02

  • /Nord de la Réunion

  • /Nouméa

  • /Nouméa/NOU04

  • /Peniche

  • /Peniche/PEN01

  • /Nouméa/NOU03

  • /Nouméa/NOU09

  • /Nouméa/NOU05

  • /Peniche/PEN02

  • /Plymouth/PLY01

  • /Peniche/PEN03

  • /Plymouth

  • /Nouméa/NOU08

  • /Nouméa/NOU07

  • /Peniche/PEN04

  • /Plymouth/PLY03

  • /Rimouski/RIM02

  • /Rimouski/RIM04

  • /Nouméa/NOU01

  • /Plymouth/PLY04

  • /Plymouth/PLY02

  • /Rimouski/RIM01

  • /Rimouski/RIM03

  • /Rimouski

Mission Atlantic - Resources

  • Data
Access constraints
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints

DO NOT USE FOR NAVIGATION
Spatial representation type
Grid
Distance
15  Arc second
Language
English
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Oceans
N
S
E
W
thumbnail




Number of dimensions
2
Dimension name
Vertical
Dimension name
Time
Cell geometry
Area
Transformation parameter availability
No
Distribution format
Name Version

GeoTIFF

1.0
OnLine resource
Protocol Linkage Name

WWW:LINK

 		https://seabed2030.org/

SeaBed 2030 website

WWW:DOWNLOAD

 		https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/historical_data_sets/#gebco_2020

Download link on gebco website

WWW:DOWNLOAD

 		https://download.gebco.net/

Download data for user-defined areas

OGC:WMS

 		https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/gebco_web_services/web_map_service/mapserv?

GEBCO_LATEST_2

WWW:LINK

 		https://www.gebco.net/about_us/committees_and_groups/scrum/ibcso/

International Bathymetic Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO)

WWW:DOWNLOAD

 		https://hs.pangaea.de/Maps/bathy/IBCSO_v1/IBCSO_background.zip

IBCSO RGB-map rasterlayer in low resolution (GeoTiFF, 30Mb)

WWW:DOWNLOAD

 		https://hs.pangaea.de/Maps/bathy/IBCSO_v1/IBCSO_background_hq.zip

IBCSO RGB-map rasterlayer in high resolution (GeoTiFF, 99Mb)

WWW:LINK

 		https://tiles.emodnet-bathymetry.eu/

EMODnet Bathymetry WMTS service

WWW:LINK

 		https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/geoviewer

EMODnet viewer
Hierarchy level
Dataset

Domain consistency

Conformance result

Title

RÈGLEMENT (UE) N o 1089/2010 DE LA COMMISSION du 23 novembre 2010 portant modalités d'application de la directive 2007/2/CE du Parlement européen et du Conseil en ce qui concerne l'interopérabilité des séries et des services de données géographiques

Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Explanation

See the referenced specification

Metadata

File identifier
7b032e0a-515d-4685-b546-73995bea6287 XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Date stamp
2025-05-15T22:58:41.024314Z
Metadata standard name

ISO 19115-3 - SEXTANT
Metadata standard version

1.0
 
 

Overviews

overview

Spatial extent

thumbnail

Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Elevation
Mission Atlantic - BODC Parameters

/Marine geology/Gravity, magnetics and bathymetry
Mission Atlantic - Case Studies

Atlantic Ocean
Mission Atlantic - Data type (DMP)

Spatial data products
Mission Atlantic - Resources

Data
Mission Atlantic - Work Package

WP4 Benthic Mapping WP6 Dynamics of ecosystem state and resources
Thèmes Sextant

/Physical Environment


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