Abstract's details

"PEACHI Jason-3": a processing laboratory for innovative altimetry products

Sophie Le Gac (CNES, France)

CoAuthors

Jean-Christophe Poisson (CLS, France); Pierre Thibaut (CLS, France); François Boy (CNES, France); Amandine Guillot (CNES, France); Bruno Picard (CLS, France); Laiba Amarouche (CLS, France); Nicolas Picot (CNES, France)

Event: 2015 Ocean Surface Topography Science Team Meeting

Session: Instrument Processing: Measurement and retracking (SAR and LRM)

Presentation type: Type Poster

Contribution: PDF file

Abstract:

With proven experience from the PEACHI project, whose goal is to provide expertise products including the latest algorithms and corrections in Ka band using SARAL/AltiKa data, CNES is leading a similar initiative for Jason-3.
Jason-3 has been long-awaited by the users’ community to ensure continuity with current altimeters and will contribute as reference mission to provide a global mean sea level data record.
Complementary to the official O/I/GDR products, expert users will be granted access to enhanced products through the “PEACHI Jason-3” prototype. Results from current studies and latest improvements of the data processing will be included.
For the first time, numerical retracking outputs will be available over the global ocean: performance of this algorithm has been demonstrated using Jason-2 data. By taking into account the natural long-term instrumental drift through the use of the real PTR measurement, we demonstrate it stands out as a significant improvement to conventional altimeters instrument processing and to Jason-3 even more so.
Complimentary benefits brought by numerical retracking include a significant reduction of the wave height and range estimation noise.
"PEACHI Jason-3" products will also include other solutions such as a new wet tropospheric correction based on neural network simulations, a three-dimensional sea state bias correction, and all up-to-date geophysical corrections needed to compute the sea level anomaly at 20 Hz and 1 Hz resolution.
We foresee that "PEACHI Jason-3" prototype will successfully demonstrate the need for numerical retracking processing of Jason-3 data and, more generally, the feasibility of taking into account any instrumental constraints such as PTR response evolution or altimeter antenna diagram.
 

Poster show times:

Room Start Date End Date
Grand Ballroom Foyer Thu, Oct 22 2015,11:00 Thu, Oct 22 2015,18:00
Sophie Le Gac
CNES
France
sophie.legac@cnes.fr