CoAuthors

Fabien Blarel (CTOH / LEGOS, France); Denis Blumstein (CTOH / LEGOS, France); Sara Fleury (CTOH / LEGOS, France); Frédéric Frappart (CTOH / LEGOS, France); Florent Garnier (CTOH / LEGOS, France); Léger Fabien (CTOH / LEGOS, France); Rosemary Morrow (CTOH / LEGOS, France); Fernando Nino (CTOH / LEGOS, France); Oscar Vergara (CTOH / LEGOS, France)

This presentation provides an overview of activities of French National Observation Service (SNO) dedicated to satellite altimetry – the CTOH, and the Research & Development work developped within the OSTST Project PRIAM « new Perspectives for higher ResolutIon Altimetry - a Multi-disciplinary approach» - over the 2016-2020 period. Our R&D work is based on a multi-thematic approach in order to develop new regional applications at fine scales over continental surfaces, the open ocean and marginal seas. It is organised around one upstream theme (waveform analysis) providing a way of tackling the problem of altimetry geophysical estimation over different surfaces, and four application themes: coastal ocean dynamics, fine- scale open ocean dynamics, continental surface waters, and sea-ice.
This brief overview focuses on altimetric R&D for mulitple altimeter missions : ERS/Envisat, T/P, Jason-1,2,3, Cryosat-2, SARAL, and Sentinel-3 missions, leading to a better assessment of the corresponding altimeter measurement quality. A major objective is to better understand the smaller-scale signal and errors over the different surfaces, from both conventional and SAR mode nadir altimeters, how they vary in space and time, and how the changing technology will improve, or impact on, our long-term climate time series over each surface. Our longer-term analyses in conventional and SAR mode will also bring invaluable information for the upcoming Sentinel- 6/Jason-CS mission with its interleaved mode (launch in Nov 2020) and the future SWOT SAR/interferometric altimetric mission (launch in 2022) with higher resolution in 2D.