CoAuthors

John Kuhn (NOAA, United States); Eric Leuliette (NOAA, United States)

The NOAA/NESDIS Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry provides near-real time (NRT) and delayed-time (DT) gridded Level-3 sea level anomaly (SLA) products publicly available for download through ftp and NOAA’s CoastWatch/OceanWatch (coastwatch.noaa.gov). These are global gridded multiple altimeter optimal interpolation grids with a spatial resolution of 0.25° longitude/latitude. The NRT dataset is available daily from February 2017 through the present and the DT dataset is available for the period 2013 - 2018. Currently, homogeneous Jason-2, Jason-3, AltiKa, CryoSat-2, Sentinel-3A, and Sentinel-3B data from the Radar Altimeter Database System (RADS) are used in the processing of the NRT dataset and this dataset is also part of NOAA’s OceanWatch Monitor. Within the NRT and DT SLA data files, the NOAA/NESDIS Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry also provides NRT and DT zonal and meridional components of the geostrophic current. The daily geostrophic currents are also global ocean with a spatial resolution of 0.25° longitude/latitude. The NRT geostrophic currents are available from March 2019 through the present and the DT currents are available for years 2013-2018. Recently, we have been working on reprocessing more years of SLA grids and geostrophic currents. Additionally, with more years of geostrophic currents, we are considering an Eddy Kinetic Energy product.
CoastWatch/OceanWatch also provides homogeneous along-track significant wave height, wind speed and sea level anomaly from RADS. These altimetry datasets are available through a Granule Selector Tool and can be overlaid with NPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS, Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Instrument, and Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument data.