From these locations, the products are distributed widely over the internet and are turned into various sea surface height, wind speed, significant wave height and atmospheric water vapor products. The products are used by research scientists, educators, and service providers.
Service providers use the data to support marine operations such as ship routing.
There are a large number of practical applications for the data. The Science Data Team Data Analyst picks up the engineering and science products and creates the first data records that go out to the world. About five weeks after this, information received from the Goddard Precision Orbit Determination Team, which provides more accurate orbit ephemeris data, is combined with the IGDRs to create the final NASA science data product the Geophysical Data Records, or GDRs. From these sources, the data are available to scientists and researchers around the world. NASA and CNES exchange all final data products, so that each has a complete record of the satellite's observations.