Benoit Legresy (CSIRO, Australia); Andrea Hay (University of Tasmania, Australia); Jack Beardsley (University of Tasmania, Australia); Boye Zhou (University of Tasmania, Australia); Matt King (University of Tasmania, Australia)

The historical Bass Strait altimeter validation facility is the sole facility of its kind situated within the swath of the SWOT Fast Sampling Phase (FSP). In preparation for the SWOT mission, new surface and sub-surface based in situ instrumentation were developed and deployed, enabling a contribution to the validation of SWOT data products using a geometric approach. We detail the enhancements made which include the use of 5-beam ADCP instruments for the determination of shallow water SSH, current and wave field information, the use of 9 GNSS/INS equipped buoys and regional high resolution atmospheric and oceanographic model outputs. We present our approach and early results to SWOT validation including the characterisation of intra swath variability in SSH, wave state and tropospheric delay.

While limited to individual point sampling, we present enhancements made to two other opportunistic sites within the SWOT FSP orbit in the Australian region. The first is the Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS) which is a deep water mooring in the Southern Ocean (~47°S, 141°E). We present results from recently published work from this site that focused on validation of SWIM wave parameters in this highly energic region. We present early comparisons of GNSS-derived SSH and SWH estimates against SWOT FSP data at this site. The second site provides insight into dynamics across the Great Barrier Reef with instrumentation deployed at and around Davies Reef (~18.8°S, 147.6°E). Early interpretation of SWOT and in situ data from this site is also presented.