CoAuthors

Christopher Buchhaupt (NOAA/University of Maryland, United States); Feng Hui (University of New Hampshire, United States); Chris Ray (St. Mary's College Californial/University of Maryland, United States); Walter Smith (NOAA , United States); Doug Vandemark (University of New Hampshire, United States)

In this presentation, we review the main results obtained during the NOAA funded OSTST project “Development of Fully-Focused SAR Altimetry for Oceanographic Applications”.

During the project, we have developed critical aspects of this novel SAR altimetry processing technique, that includes the development of a L1/L2 processor, capable of processing CryoSat-2 and Sentinel-3 data from L1A to L2. The data products are generated in netCDF format for easy access and distribution to users.

We have also focused on the development of applications of this technique for the open ocean, coastal zones and sea-ice, that involved the investigation of an optimum data processing strategy for SAR altimetry data, the development of new retracking methods for specular surfaces, and the analysis of the effect of vertical wave motion on the SAR altimetry measurements of the open ocean.

The presentation will conclude providing an overlook of future work and discussing the potentialities of this technique for the Sentinel-6 altimeter.