Abstract's details

Value added Sentinel-3A sea level products by the Marine Altimetry L2P-L3 Service operational since end of June 2017

Sabine Philipps (CLS, France)

Emilie Bronner (CNES, France); Marie-Isabelle Pujol (CLS, France); Michael Ablain (CLS, France); Marine Lievin (CLS, France); Isabelino Denis (CNES, France); Carolina Nogueira Loddo (EUMETSAT, Germany)

Event: 2017 Ocean Surface Topography Science Team Meeting

Session: Application development for Operations

Presentation type: Poster

The Sentinel-3A satellite, which carries among other instruments a dual-frequency SAR altimeter (SRAL) was successfully launched on 2016, February 16th. The Marine Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) in EUMETSAT provides Marine Level 2 SRAL products (along-track mono-mission product containing sea surface height anomaly as well as its components (orbit, altimeter range, geophysical corrections and models, etc.)).

In the frame of the Copernicus Programme funded by the European Union, under an EUMETSAT Contract, CNES with its subcontractor CLS has developed and is operating the Sentinel-3 Marine Altimetry L2P-L3 Service. The value added sea level anomaly L2P products are along-track mono-mission products, providing as much as possible the same updated corrections and models for several altimeter missions, in order to facilitate inter-mission comparisons. The sea level anomaly is provided with a validity flag, enabling users to discard data with spurious measurements. The L3 products contain the valid and low-pass filtered sea level anomaly and absolute dynamic topography after inter-calibration with a reference mission. This is a major contribution to the Copernicus Marine Environment and Monitoring Service which distributes the data from all the altimetry satellites.

The Service was pre-operational since mid December 2016 and is fully operational since the 27th of June 2017. The following Sentinel-3A value added products are distributed to the users:
- Marine L2P products in near-real-time (NRT), short-time-critical (STC) and non-time-critical (NTC) timelinesses on AVISO+ ftp; NRT and STC products are also distributed via EUMETCast, EUMETSAT’S multi-service dissemination system.
- Global L3 products in near-real-time (NRT, based on short-time-critical L2P data completed with near-real-time L2P data) and delayed time (DT) timeliness via CMEMS

This new L2P-L3 Service for Sentinel-3 is based on the existing operational system in place for Jason-2, CryoSat-2, SARAL, etc. It takes benefits of the well-proven organization and experience on past and existing activities. This service and its products will be presented in detail. This service will also be provided for Sentinel-3B (the launch of Sentinel-3B is foreseen in early 2018).

Contribution: Poster_OSTST17_Service_L2PL3_SLA-final.pdf (pdf, 1496 ko)

Corresponding author:

Sabine Philipps

CLS

France

sphilipps@cls.fr

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