CoAuthors

Johan Nilsson (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, United States); Jean-Damien Desjonquères (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, United States); Shailen Desai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, United States)

The Sentinel-6 spacecraft has been collecting sea level measurements along the historical Topex reference groundtrack starting 17 December 2020 and took over as the new reference mission in April 2022. We present a summary of calibration and validation results highlighting the continued high value of Sentinel-6’s altimetry products for oceanographic applications at the mesoscale level and for climate studies. The analysis is based on the GDR-F products with focus on the most recent re-processed version F08. Sentinel-6’s performance is analyzed using along-track as well as crossover statistics. Moreover, a cross-platform analysis will be performed using observations during its tandem phase with Jason-3 and during the subsequent phase with Jason-3 on the interleaved orbit starting in April 2022. The analysis also includes assessment of the performance using JPL’s GPS-based precise orbit solutions.