Assessment of SARAL/AltiKa Wave Height Measurements Relative to Buoy, Jason-2, and Cryosat-2 Data

SARAL/AltiKa GDR-T are analyzed to assess the quality of the significant wave height (SWH) measurements. SARAL along-track SWH plots reveal cases of erroneous data, more or less isolated, not detected by the quality flags. The anomalies are often correlated with strong attenuation of the Ka-band backscatter coefficient, sensitive to clouds and rain. A quality test based on the 1Hz standard deviation is proposed to detect such anomalies. From buoy comparison, it is shown that SARAL SWH is more accurate than Jason-2, particularly at low SWH, and globally does not require any correction. Results are better with open ocean than with coastal buoys. The scatter and the number of outliers are much larger for coastal buoys. SARAL is then compared with Jason-2 and Cryosat-2. The altimeter data are extracted from the global altimeter SWH Ifremer data base, including specific corrections to calibrate the various altimeters. The comparison confirms the high quality of SARAL SWH. The 1Hz standard deviation is much less than for Jason-2 and Cryosat-2, particularly at low SWH. Furthermore, results show that the corrections applied to Jason-2 and to Cryosat-2, in the data base, are efficient, improving the global agreement between the three altimeters.

DopSCAT: A mission concept for simultaneous measurements of marine winds and surface currents

A radar scatterometer operates by transmitting a pulse of microwave energy toward the ocean's surface and measuring the normalized (per-unit-surface) radar backscatter coefficient (σ°). The primary application of scatterometry is the measurement of near-surface ocean winds. By combining σ° measurements from different azimuth angles, the 10 m vector wind can be determined through a Geophysical Model Function (GMF), which relates wind and backscatter. This paper proposes a mission concept for the measurement of both oceanic winds and surface currents, which makes full use of earlier C-band radar remote sensing experience. For the determination of ocean currents, in particular, the novel idea of using two chirps of opposite slope is introduced. The fundamental processing steps required to retrieve surface currents are given together with their associated accuracies. A detailed description of the mission proposal and comparisons between real and retrieved surface currents are presented. The proposed ocean Doppler scatterometer can be used to generate global surface ocean current maps with accuracies better than 0.2 m/s at a spatial resolution better than 25 km (i.e., 12.5 km spatial sampling) on a daily basis. These maps will allow gaining some insights on the upper ocean mesoscale dynamics. The work lies at a frontier, given that the present inability to measure ocean currents from space in a consistent and synoptic manner represents one of the greatest weaknesses in ocean remote sensing.