ETOPO1 Global Relief Model

ETOPO1 is a 1 arc-minute global relief model of Earth's surface that integrates land topography and ocean bathymetry. It was built from numerous global and regional data sets, and is available in "Ice Surface" (top of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets) and "Bedrock" (base of the ice sheets) versions. Historic ETOPO2v2 and ETOPO5 global relief grids are deprecated but still available.

NGDC has utilized the ETOPO1 Global Relief Model to calculate the volumes of the world's oceans and to derive a hypsographic curve of Earth's surface.

Color Image of Earth

A color shaded-relief image of Earth from ETOPO1 Ice Surface, created by NGDC, is displayed above. The image is downloadable as a georeferenced TIFF or KMZ file, and available for NOAA's Science On a Sphere^®. It is also viewable in web browsers at ArcGIS.com. The image was created with Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) using three color palettes: blues for ocean depths and above sea-level lakes; greens and browns for dry land areas; and shades of white for the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, and other glaciers greater than 100 km² using the GLIMS Glacier Database at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Image authors are J. Varner and E. Lim, CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Atlantic-centered and Pacific-centered wall posters of ETOPO1 are now available. Poster author is P. Grothe, University of Colorado at Boulder, now with Georgia Institute of Technology.

Available Versions of the Grid

• ETOPO1 Ice Surface: Grid of Earth's surface depicting the top of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.
• ETOPO1 Bedrock: Grid of Earth's surface depicting the bedrock underneath the ice sheets.
  
  Relief for the rest of the world is the same in both versions.

Available Registrations [more about grid registration]

• Grid/node-registered: cells are centered on lines of latitude and longitude (21601 by 10801 cells).
• Cell/pixel-registered: cell edges are along lines of latitude and longitude (21600 by 10800 cells).
  
  The grid-registered is the authoritative registration. The cell-registered is derived from the grid-registered, and the conversion produces slightly flattened relief. More about grid registration.

Horizontal Datum

The horizontal datum of ETOPO1 is WGS 84 geographic.

Vertical Datum

The vertical datum of ETOPO1 is sea level. More specific vertical datums, such as mean sea level, mean high water, and mean low water, differ by less than the vertical accuracy of ETOPO1 (~10 meters at best), and are therefore effectively equivalent.

Download Whole-World Grids

• ETOPO1 Ice Surface: [View Ice Surface Metadata]
  
  
  • grid-registered: netCDF, binary*, xyz, georeferenced tiff
  • cell-registered: netCDF, binary*, xyz, georeferenced tiff
  
  
• ETOPO1 Bedrock: [View Bedrock Metadata]
  
  
  • grid-registered: netCDF, binary*, xyz, georeferenced tiff
  • cell-registered: netCDF, binary*, xyz, georeferenced tiff
    
    * ArcGIS users - use binary and convert using 'Float to Raster'
  
  

Custom Grids

• Online: Custom regional grids can be created and extracted online from ETOPO1 using NGDC's WCS Client;
• Online: Custom regional grids can be created online from ETOPO1 using NGDC's Grid Translator;
• Desktop/Offline: For both cell-centered and grid-centered downloaded grids, custom grids with user-defined bounds can be created in multiple formats, using the desktop version of Grid Translator, part of the free GEODAS Windows Software for Online Downloads.

How to Cite ETOPO1:

Amante, C. and B. W. Eakins, ETOPO1 1 Arc-Minute Global Relief Model: Procedures, Data Sources and Analysis. NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS NGDC-24, 19 pp, March 2009.