Abstract's details
Sentinel-3a Delay Doppler Processing: A first attempt of budget error Assessment.
Event: 2016 Ocean Surface Topography Science Team Meeting
Session: Regional and Global CAL/VAL for Assembling a Climate Data Record
Presentation type: Poster
The ESA (European Space Agency) mission Sentinel-3a was successfully launched in February 2016. Sentinel-3a is a multi-instrument mission to measure sea-surface topography, sea- and land-surface temperature, ocean colour and land colour with high-end accuracy and reliability. The mission will support ocean forecasting systems, as well as environmental and climate monitoring.
As the Cryosat-2 altimeter, the SRAL (Sentinel Radar Altimeter) radar differs from previous conventional pulse limited altimeter in that it is capable of operating in several modes. The conventional or low resolution mode (LRM) was activated during the first cycle in order to ensure the continuity with the Synthetic Aperture Radar mode (SARM) activated since the 12th April 2016 over the global Ocean.
The SARM (or Delay Doppler mode) full coverage is available for the first time in the altimetry history and it will allow to strengthen the past results obtained with Cryosat-2 and to better characterise the SARM benefits (noise reduction, smaller across-track footprint) using a more representative sampling and taking into account the regional specificities.
This global coverage added to the new repetitive Sentinel-3a ground-track opens up new perspectives in the understanding of the SARM signal.
The Sentinel-3a Prototype Processing (S3PP) developed by CNES (Boy et al., 2015-2016) inherited from the Cryosat-2 Prototype Processing (CPP) (Boy et al., 2012-2013) starts from Sentinel-3a level-0 telemetry files and generate Sea Level Anomaly (SLA) measures for each record in LRM or SAR mode. The present study was performed in the frame of the Sentinel-3a phase E1 (commissioning phase) lead by ESTEC and CNES. It aims at drawing up a SRAL performances overview through the assessment of the S3PP retracked parameters and the analyses of potential residual errors.
Back to the list of abstractAs the Cryosat-2 altimeter, the SRAL (Sentinel Radar Altimeter) radar differs from previous conventional pulse limited altimeter in that it is capable of operating in several modes. The conventional or low resolution mode (LRM) was activated during the first cycle in order to ensure the continuity with the Synthetic Aperture Radar mode (SARM) activated since the 12th April 2016 over the global Ocean.
The SARM (or Delay Doppler mode) full coverage is available for the first time in the altimetry history and it will allow to strengthen the past results obtained with Cryosat-2 and to better characterise the SARM benefits (noise reduction, smaller across-track footprint) using a more representative sampling and taking into account the regional specificities.
This global coverage added to the new repetitive Sentinel-3a ground-track opens up new perspectives in the understanding of the SARM signal.
The Sentinel-3a Prototype Processing (S3PP) developed by CNES (Boy et al., 2015-2016) inherited from the Cryosat-2 Prototype Processing (CPP) (Boy et al., 2012-2013) starts from Sentinel-3a level-0 telemetry files and generate Sea Level Anomaly (SLA) measures for each record in LRM or SAR mode. The present study was performed in the frame of the Sentinel-3a phase E1 (commissioning phase) lead by ESTEC and CNES. It aims at drawing up a SRAL performances overview through the assessment of the S3PP retracked parameters and the analyses of potential residual errors.