CoAuthors

Laurent Brodeau (Ocean Next, France); Jean-Marc Molines (IGE, CNRS, France); Nicole Audiffren (CINES, France); Aurélie Albert (IGE, CNRS, France); Adekunle Ajayi (IGE, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, France); Emmanuel Cosme (IGE, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, France); Stéphanie Leroux (Ocean Next, France); Thierry Penduff (IGE, CNRS, France); Bernard Barnier (IGE, CNRS, France); Jacques Verron (Ocean Next, France); Pierre Brasseur (IGE, CNRS, France)

The upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission will provide an opportunity for better understanding ocean surface processes at scales <100km, and their impact on larger scale oceanic flow features. To achieve the above scientific objectives of the mission, specific inversion techniques will be designed to estimate two-dimensional maps of SSH and 3D ocean surface fields from SWOT data. The preparation of such inversion techniques not only requires knowledge of the sampling and errors, but also requires information about typical SSH scenes that will be measured during the mission. This is why several efforts have been undertaken in the SWOT Science Team to produce realistic submesoscale-permitting ocean circulation model-based datasets that provide virtual observational scenes to SWOT science projects. In this poster, we will report on one such dataset, which covers the North Atlantic Ocean from mid to high latitudes. The dataset is based on a NEMO ocean model configuration, NATL60, which is run at 1/60° horizontal resolution (~1km) with 300 vertical levels. This poster will describe the design rationale and the setting of the NATL60 model configuration. The latest distributed dataset will be described and evaluated in terms of large scale circulation patterns and large scale hydrography. The evaluation of the resolved fine scale variability, and fine scale velocity gradients, will also be presented, showing in particular that the gradients of surface flows are statistically consistent with mooring observations down to the model effective resolution at 10km scale. The poster will also provide information about data availability and future evolutions of NATL60 configuration.