Abstract's details

Altimeter products for the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS mission

Remko Scharroo (EUMETSAT, Germany)

CoAuthors

Hans Bonekamp (EUMETSAT, Germany); Christelle Ponsard (EUMETSAT, Germany); Carolina Nogueira Loddo (EUMETSAT, Germany)

Event: 2014 Ocean Surface Topography Science Team Meeting

Session: Near Real Time Products and Applications and Multi-Mission, Multi-Sensor Observations

Presentation type: Type Poster

Contribution: PDF file

Abstract:

The Sentinel-6 (Jason-CS) mission will be unique in the Jason-series of altimeters. It will be the first of the "reference missions" outfitted with a SAR altimeter. Not only that, it will be the first altimeter that operates in a continuous high-rate pulse mode, such that there is no longer the need to wait 2/3 of the time for pulses to be received, while transmitting only 1/3 of the time, like the altimeters of CryoSat-2 and Sentinel-3. On top of that, Sentinel-6 will be operating in this mode 100% of the time.

This particular operating mode allows simultaneous production of low-resolution mode (LRM) measurements on-board as well as the processing of SAR echoes on-ground. Both types of measurements will be provided in (separate) Sentinel-6 altimeter data products.

The data chain for Jason-CS foresees to have a number of products similar to those of Sentinel-3, while at the same time trying to maintain a good coherency with the Jason-1 and Jason-2 product tree. The aim is to provide near-realtime (NRT) products compatible with those of the previous missions while at the same time providing slow-time-critical (STC) and non-time-critical (NTC) products with all of the variables needed to fully exploit and analyse the SAR mode data.

Similar to the Jason-1/2 products will be produced with three different latencies (3-5 hours, 1-2 days, 60 days) and three levels of complexities (1-Hz data, 1-Hz and 20-Hz data, 1-Hz and 20-Hz data and waveforms). On top of that, Level 1 products will be released containing all the individual echoes in the time domain (L1A) or the measurement data and waveforms without geophysical corrections (L1B). A L1B-S product, with the individual waveforms stacked and geo-located such as is available for Sentinel-3 is under consideration.

This poster will provide an overview of the suggested data products and invites users to give their feedback on the proposed data delivery and data formats.
 
Altimeter products for the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS mission
Remko Scharroo
EUMETSAT
Germany
remko.scharroo@eumetsat.int