CoAuthors

Jörg Reinking (Jade University of Applied Science Oldenburg, Germany)

High precision and reliable information about the sea surface height (SSH) are of vital interest for the global scientific community. Such data can be collected with remote sensing techniques like satellite altimetry and GNSS reflectometry. These techniques deliver spatially distributed data over the oceans but suffer from interfering signals near coastlines. In this areas tide gauges collect information about the SSH at specific stations. Ship-based GNSS measurements of the SSH can be used to beneficially expand these set of techniques. All three techniques have their own characteristics and show different spatial coverage and temporal resolution of the deduced SSH.

In a newly founded project at the Jade University of Applied Science in Oldenburg an approach for the combination of all three techniques will be developed. The region of interest is the German Bight and data from all available altimetry satellites will be merged with tide gauge readings and ship-derived SSH data. As ship-based SSH measurements are influenced by systematic geophysical, hydrostatic and hydrodynamic effects a processing procedure for these data will be developed and tested in a first step. In addition to the project outline the results from former projects will be shown which indicate the great potential of ships used as GNSS sensor platforms.