Monomission Corrected Sea Surface Heights (CorSSH)

Contents: along-track corrected sea surface heights wrt reference ellipsoid Use: stationary or long-term geophysical and ocean phenomenon studies The data are mono altimeter satellite product, with corrections and geophysical parameters. Significant wave heights and backscatter coefficient are also provided. Data available in delayed time in NetCDF format. Two types of products are available: - "Ref" (Reference) ones, where all corrections are stable all along the period provided - "Upd" (Updated) ones, where corrections are updated with the most efficient algorithms available at the moment. The TOPEX/POSEIDON Corrected Sea Surface Heights (T/P - CORSSH) or reduced Geophysical Data Records are computed from the AVISO Merged Geophysical Data Records (GDR-Ms) of the TOPEX/POSEIDON mission, the ERS-1 Corrected Sea Surface Heights (ERS1 - CORSSH) or reduced Geophysical Data Records are computed from the CERSAT OPRs of the ERS-1 mission. Basic GDRs are first validated -bad data are rejected - and all altimetric corrections (environmental and orbit error corrections including the inverse barometer correction) are applied to compute the corrected sea surface height. Improved altimetric corrections are used when available. Given the high accuracy of TOPEX/POSEIDON orbits, no orbit error correction is calculated. The ERS-1 orbit error is calculated from a global minimization of (TOPEX/POSEIDON , ERS-1) crossover differences. This method provides ERS-1 orbits with an accuracy similar to TOPEX/POSEIDON orbits. It also provides a homogeneous ERS-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON data sets. CORSSHs are also distributed on CD ROMs (ISO 9660). Each CD ROM contains one year of data, one file per cycle. Each file contains the following fields per second : latitude, longitude, time, corrected sea surface height, orbit error, ocean tide (including loading tide), inverse barometer correction, significant wave height, backscatter coefficient. Users may thus compute and apply different oceanic tide correction, recalculate electromagnetic bias corrections or chose not to apply inverse barometer effect or orbit error corrections. CORSSHs are swath data and no images. CD ROMs contain read software for UNIX and VMS systems. User handbooks - one for the CD ROM, one for the data products - are distributed with the first CD ROM.