Abstract's details

Does Swell Impacts Significant Wave Height Measurements from SAR Altimetry?

Saleh Abdalla (ECMWF, United Kingdom)

CoAuthors

Salvatore Dinardo (EUMETSAT, Germany)

Event: 2016 SAR Altimetry Workshop

Session: SAR mode performances: SAR CALVAL from Cryosat-2 and Sentinel-3

Presentation type: Type Oral

Contribution: PDF file

Abstract:

Significant wave height (SWH) product is the most robust measurement produced by radar altimeters. It was shown that SWH product from conventional altimetry (e.g. ENVISAT, Cryosat-2, Jason-2 and SARAL/AltiKa) is of excellent quality. The same was also found to be correct for the SWH measured using the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Mode (e.g. from Cryosat-2).

Since the impact of ocean swell on SAR altimetry, sea surface height in particular, has been a hot topic recently, it is worthwhile questioning the swell impact on SAR SWH measurements. For this, Cryosat SAR Mode SWH product produced using the SAMOSA ocean model processed in the ESRIN G-POD service open to the Community called SAR Versatile Altimetric Toolkit for Ocean Research & Exploitation (SARvatore) covering the period from Sep. 2010 to Jun. 2014 is collocated with the ECMWF operational ocean wave model products. The collocated dataset will be examined to see whether the swell has any impact on SAR SWH. The results, however, will be limited to the areas where Cryosat is operating in the SAR Mode.
 

Oral presentation show times:

Room Start Date End Date
Auditorium Mon, Oct 31 2016,14:30 Mon, Oct 31 2016,14:45
Saleh Abdalla
ECMWF
United Kingdom
abdalla@ecmwf.int