MERIT DEM a high accuracy global DEM at 3 arc second resolution (~90 m at the equator) produced by eliminating major error components from existing DEMs (NASA SRTM3 DEM, JAXA AW3D DEM, Viewfinder Panoramas DEM). MERIT DEM separates absolute bias, stripe noise, speckle noise and tree height bias using multiple satellite datasets and filtering techniques. After the error removal, land areas mapped with 2 m or better vertical accuracy were increased from 39% to 58%. Significant improvements were found in flat regions where height errors larger than topography variability, and landscapes such as river networks and hill-valley structures became clearly represented.MERIT DEM a high accuracy global DEM at 3 arc s