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ESA-SCOOP

The aim of this Coastal Zone and Open Ocean Study is twofold: firstly to characterise the expected performance of the Sentinel-3 SAR altimeter product generated by the currently specified processing baseline and secondly to test, implement and evaluate improved retrieval methods.

Period

since 01.10.2015

Funding Agency

ESA

Contact

Dr.-Eng. Luciana Fenoglio-Marc

Prof. Dr.-Eng. Jürgen Kusche

Summary

The Sentinel-3 satellite is the second satellite with a SAR mode altimeter. Its Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (SRAL), based on Cryosat-2, is complemented by a Microwave Radiometer to provide a wet troposphere correction and will operate at both Ku and C-Band to provide an accurate along-track ionospheric correction. The aim of this Coastal Zone and Open Ocean Study is twofold: firstly to characterise the expected performance of the Sentinel-3 SAR altimeter product generated by the currently specified processing baseline and secondly to test, implement and evaluate improved retrieval methods.

The overall objectives of SCOOP are to:

  • Characterise the expected performance of Sentinel-3 SRAL SAR mode altimeter products over the open ocean/coastal zone
  • Develop and evaluate enhancements to the current baseline data processing schemes to provide improved performance over the open ocean and in the coastal zone
  • Support correct interpretation and application of the products by providing clear technical information on the products and their processing
  • Provide a scientific roadmap with recommendations for further developments and implementations /

This will be achieved through studies in the main Open Ocean and Coastal Zone themes, and a subsidiary theme on the Wet Troposphere Correction.

The University Bonn is involved in the validation part of the Coastal Zone Study.

The aims are to:

  • Assess regionally the CryoSat-2 (S-3) sea surface height (SSH), sea wave height (SWH) and wind speed (U10) data quality (Level 2 product)
  • Evaluate the impact of wet tropospheric correction to the altimeter range developed within this project
  • Evaluate the effect of swell on the altimeter signal

The study is carried out by a consortium led by SatOC:

The nine sub-contractors are :

  • CLS, Toulouse, France
  • isardSAT, Spain
  • NOC
  • Noveltis
  • Starlab
  • University of Bonn (UBonn), Germany
  • TU Delft
  • University of Porto (UP), Portugal

Website: http://www.satoc.eu/projects/SCOOP/

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