Abstract's details
Sea state uncertainty from a triple collocation analysis of observations during the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich – Jason-3 tandem phase
CoAuthors
Event: 2022 Ocean Surface Topography Science Team Meeting
Session: Science I: Climate data records for understanding the causes of global and regional sea level variability and change
Presentation type: Type Poster
Contribution: PDF file
Abstract:
Accurate knowledge and understanding of the sea state and its variability is crucial to numerous oceanic and coastal engineering applications. Owing to increased numbers of concurrent satellite missions, both the duration of record and frequency of observations of the sea state have motivated substantial research effort directed at both oceanic and coastal sea state variability. However, owing to a sparsity of high quality in situ long term records, uncertainty in sea state observations remains problematic. The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich mission adds to the continuing satellite record and in particular, the Sentinel-6 MF – Jason-3 tandem phase offers a valuable opportunity to examine uncertainty in sea state observations. Together with in situ data from moored buoys, the three data sets provide collocated observations of significant wave height that can be used for a triple collocation analysis spanning 12 months. Results from the initial phase of the analysis are presented for some specific cases.
Further, the 12 month tandem phase potentially offers relatively abundant collocated data that permits analyses of the relative uncertainty contributions conditional upon sea state. In particular we start by examining swell dominated regions and propose a methodology based upon exploiting recent multivariate sea state observations from Sentinel-1 imaging SAR, recently produced by the European Space Agency Sea State Climate Change Initiative (CCI). Traditionally, in the absence of global in situ or remote observations, a reanalysis product could be employed to identify swell events. However, these new high quality sea state observations, that include swell wave height and wave period, facilitate a multivariate intercomparison with reanalysis data. Preliminary intercomparison has already suggested discrepancy in wave period. We summarize some recent results and describe how this approach directs the geographic focus of the Sentinel-6 MF – Jason-3 tandem phase triple collocation study.
Further, the 12 month tandem phase potentially offers relatively abundant collocated data that permits analyses of the relative uncertainty contributions conditional upon sea state. In particular we start by examining swell dominated regions and propose a methodology based upon exploiting recent multivariate sea state observations from Sentinel-1 imaging SAR, recently produced by the European Space Agency Sea State Climate Change Initiative (CCI). Traditionally, in the absence of global in situ or remote observations, a reanalysis product could be employed to identify swell events. However, these new high quality sea state observations, that include swell wave height and wave period, facilitate a multivariate intercomparison with reanalysis data. Preliminary intercomparison has already suggested discrepancy in wave period. We summarize some recent results and describe how this approach directs the geographic focus of the Sentinel-6 MF – Jason-3 tandem phase triple collocation study.