CoAuthors

Salvatore Dinardo (SERCO, ESA/ESRIN, Italy); Paolo Cipollini (National Oceanography Centre, UK); Helen Snaith (National Oceanography Centre, UK); David Cotton (SatOC Ltd, country); Jérôme Benveniste (ESA, Italy)

SAR altimetry represents the most significant technological advance in ocean altimetry over the past two decades. The ESA Cryosat-2 SAR altimeter has now successfully demonstrated in-orbit the fundamental improvements that can be achieved with SAR altimetry over water surfaces, in terms of reduced noise, finer along-track resolution and improved performance near the coast. As the community prepares for the SAR-enabled altimeters on the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission and the Jason-CS/Sentinel-6 mission, this paper reviews the current state of knowledge for SAR altimetry over water and presents recent validation results with Cryosat-2 SAR over the open ocean and the coastal zone in the context of the ESA STSE CryosatPlus for Oceans project. The experience of validating Cryosat-2 SAR altimeter measurements over the ocean and the coastal zone helps to draw up the lessons learned in preparation for future SAR-enabled altimeter missions.