CoAuthors

Laurent Testut (LEGOS, France); Etienne Poirier (LIENSs/Université de La Rochelle, France); Antoine Guillot (DT INSU, Brest, France); Michel Calzas (DT INSU, Brest, France); Christine Drezen (DT INSU, Brest, France); Lionel Fichen (DT INSU, Brest, France); Thibault Coulombier (LIENSs/Université de La Rochelle, France); Philippe Pineau (LIENSs/Université de La Rochelle, France); Nicolas Lachaussée (LIENSs/Université de La Rochelle, France); Christine Plumejeaud (LIENSs/Université de La Rochelle, France); Pascal Bonnefond (Observatoire de Paris, France); Xavier Bertin (LIENSs/Université de La Rochelle, France); Guy Wöppelmann (LIENSs/Université de La Rochelle, France)

Nadir altimetry in the open ocean has become key in modern oceanography and is commonly used for research and operational purposes. Current and future challenges of altimetry are, among others, to provide data in the coastal zones where are located numerous society assets and scientific questions and to densify the measurements coverage, which will be done in the future thanks to the emergence of a new generation of satellites such as Sentinel3 or SWOT.
New in-situ observing systems are then needed to conduct local CALVAL studies and help quantify errors induced for instance by site-specific land contamination.
In our contribution, we will present our current developments around the PAMELI marine ASV (Autonomous Surface Vehicule) which will be equipped to map the sealevel height in the Pertuis area, in the vicinity of the Aix Island observatory.
Aix Island observatory (close to La Rochelle, France) is located close to several past, current and future radar altimetry ground-tracks and it already benefits from existing in-situ instrumentation (tide gauges, GNSS, meteo station, etc…) and a high-resolution hydro-dynamical model, which makes this area a suitable zone for coastal altimetry calval experiments.