CoAuthors

Olivier LAURET (CLS, France); Michael ABLAIN (CLS, France); Nicolas PICOT (CNES, France)

Worthy successor to TOPEX/Poseidon Jason-1 and Jason-2, Jason-3 extends the high-precision ocean altimetry data record. Since mid-2016, Jason-3 has been the reference altimetry mission to estimate the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL), instead of Jason-2. Regional and global biases between missions have to be precisely estimated in order to insure the quality of the reference GMSL serie. For its first 23 cycles, Jason-3 and Jason-2 flew together in tandem configuration, with only 80 seconds delay, which is a unique opportunity to precisely assess parameter discrepancies between both missions and detect geographically correlated biases, jumps or drifts. Jason-2 was moved on October 2nd 2016 to the same interleaved orbit that was used by TOPEX from 2002-2005 and Jason-1 from 2009-2012: since May 17th 2017, Jason-3 is the only satellite on the historical ground-track.

A precise knowledge of Jason-3 data quality and errors is a key activity to ensure a reliable service to scientists involved in climate change studies as well as operational oceanography.
This presentation aims at presenting the overall performance of Jason-3 mission through different metrics highlighting the high-level accuracy of this mission.