Measuring currents, ice drift, and waves from space: the Sea Surface KInematics Multiscale monitoring (SKIM) concept

We propose a new satellite mission that uses a near-nadir Ka-band Doppler radar to measure surface currents, ice drift and ocean waves at spatial scales of 40?km and more, with snapshots at least every day for latitudes 75 to 82, and every few days otherwise. The use of incidence angles at 6 and 12 degrees allows a measurement of the directional wave spectrum which yields accurate corrections of the wave-induced bias in the current measurements. The instrument principle, algorithm for current velocity and mission performance are presented here. The proposed instrument can reveal features on tropical ocean and marginal ice zone dynamics that are inaccessible to other measurement systems, as well as a global monitoring of the ocean mesoscale that surpasses the capability of today?s nadir altimeters. Measuring ocean wave properties facilitates many applications, from wave-current interactions and air-sea fluxes to the transport and convergence of marine plastic debris and assessment of marine and coastal hazards

SKIM, a candidate satellite mission exploring global ocean currents and waves

The Sea surface KInematics Multiscale monitoring (SKIM) satellite mission is designed to explore ocean surface current and waves. This includes tropical currents, notably the poorly known patterns of divergence and their impact on the ocean heat budget, and monitoring of the emerging Arctic up to 82.5°N. SKIM will also make unprecedented direct measurements of strong currents, from boundary currents to the Antarctic circumpolar current, and their interaction with ocean waves with expected impacts on air-sea fluxes and extreme waves. For the first time, SKIM will directly measure the ocean surface current vector from space. The main instrument on SKIM is a Ka-band conically scanning, multi-beam Doppler radar altimeter/wave scatterometer that includes a state-of-the-art nadir beam comparable to the Poseidon-4 instrument on Sentinel 6. The well proven Doppler pulse-pair technique will give a surface drift velocity representative of the top meter of the ocean, after subtracting a large wave-induced contribution. Horizontal velocity components will be obtained with an accuracy better than 7 cm/s for horizontal wavelengths larger than 80 km and time resolutions larger than 15 days, with a mean revisit time of 4 days for of 99% of the global oceans. This will provide unique and innovative measurements that will further our understanding of the transports in the upper ocean layer, permanently distributing heat, carbon, plankton, and plastics. SKIM will also benefit from co-located measurements of water vapor, rain rate, sea ice concentration, and wind vectors provided by the European operational satellite MetOp-SG(B), allowing many joint analyses. SKIM is one of the two candidate satellite missions under development for ESA Earth Explorer 9. The other candidate is the Far infrared Radiation Understanding and Monitoring (FORUM). The final selection will be announced by September 2019, for a launch in the coming decade

Altimetry for the future: Building on 25 years of progress

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the altimetry of the future. This paper summarizes contributions and recommendations that were collected and provides guidance for future mission design, research activities, and sustainable operational radar altimetry data exploitation. Recommendations provided are fundamental for optimizing further scientific and operational advances of oceanographic observations by altimetry, including requirements for spatial and temporal resolution of altimetric measurements, their accuracy and continuity. There are also new challenges and new openings mentioned in the paper that are particularly crucial for observations at higher latitudes, for coastal oceanography, for cryospheric studies and for hydrology. The paper starts with a general introduction followed by a section on Earth System Science including Ocean Dynamics, Sea Level, the Coastal Ocean, Hydrology, the Cryosphere and Polar Oceans and the ‘‘Green” Ocean, extending the frontier from biogeochemistry to marine ecology. Applications are described in a subsequent section, which covers Operational Oceanography, Weather, Hurricane Wave and Wind Forecasting, Climate projection. Instruments’ development and satellite missions’ evolutions are described in a fourth section. A fifth section covers the key observations that altimeters provide and their potential complements, from other Earth observation measurements to in situ data. Section 6 identifies the data and methods and provides some accuracy and resolution requirements for the wet tropospheric correction, the orbit and other geodetic requirements, the Mean Sea Surface, Geoid and Mean Dynamic Topography, Calibration and Validation, data accuracy, data access and handling (including the DUACS system). Section 7 brings a transversal view on scales, integration, artificial intelligence, and capacity building (education and training). Section 8 reviews the programmatic issues followed by a conclusion

Altimetry for the future: building on 25 years of progress

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the altimetry of the future. This paper summarizes contributions and recommendations that were collected and provides guidance for future mission design, research activities, and sustainable operational radar altimetry data exploitation. Recommendations provided are fundamental for optimizing further scientific and operational advances of oceanographic observations by altimetry, including requirements for spatial and temporal resolution of altimetric measurements, their accuracy and continuity. There are also new challenges and new openings mentioned in the paper that are particularly crucial for observations at higher latitudes, for coastal oceanography, for cryospheric studies and for hydrology. The paper starts with a general introduction followed by a section on Earth System Science including Ocean Dynamics, Sea Level, the Coastal Ocean, Hydrology, the Cryosphere and Polar Oceans and the “Green” Ocean, extending the frontier from biogeochemistry to marine ecology. Applications are described in a subsequent section, which covers Operational Oceanography, Weather, Hurricane Wave and Wind Forecasting, Climate projection. Instruments’ development and satellite missions’ evolutions are described in a fourth section. A fifth section covers the key observations that altimeters provide and their potential complements, from other Earth observation measurements to in situ data. Section 6 identifies the data and methods and provides some accuracy and resolution requirements for the wet tropospheric correction, the orbit and other geodetic requirements, the Mean Sea Surface, Geoid and Mean Dynamic Topography, Calibration and Validation, data accuracy, data access and handling (including the DUACS system). Section 7 brings a transversal view on scales, integration, artificial intelligence, and capacity building (education and training). Section 8 reviews the programmatic issues followed by a conclusion

Investigating the Performance of Four Empirical Cross-Calibration Methods for the Proposed SWOT Mission

The proposed surface water and ocean topography (SWOT) mission aims at observing short scale ocean topography with an unprecedented resolution and accuracy. Its main proposed sensor is a radar interferometer, so a major source of topography error is the roll angle: the relative positions of SWOT’s antennas must be known within a few micrometers. Because reaching SWOT’s stringent requirements with onboard roll values is challenging, we carried out simulations as a contingency strategy (i.e., to be ready if roll is larger than anticipated) that could be used with ground-based data. We revisit the empirical calibration algorithms with additional solving methods (e.g., based on orbit sub-cycle) and more sophisticated performance assessments with spectral decompositions. We also explore the link between the performance of four calibration methods and the attributes of their respective calibration zones: size and geometry (e.g., crossover diamonds), temporal variability (e.g., how many days between overlapping SWOT images). In general, the so-called direct method (using a single SWOT image) yields better coverage and smaller calibrated roll residuals because the full extent of the swath can be used for calibration, but this method makes an extensive use of the external nadir constellation to separate roll from oceanic variability, and it is more prone to leakages from oceanic variability on roll (i.e., true topography signal is more likely to be corrupted if it is misinterpreted as roll) and inaccurate modeling of the true topography spectrum. For SWOT’s baseline orbit (21 days repeat and 10.9 days sub-cycle), three other methods are found to be complementary with the direct method: swath crossovers, external nadir crossovers, and sub-cycle overlaps are shown to provide an additional calibration capability, albeit with complex latitude-varying coverage and performance. The main asset of using three or four methods concurrently is to minimize systematic leakages from oceanic variability or measurement errors, by maximizing overlap zones and by minimizing the temporal variability with one-day to three-day image differences. To that extent, SWOT’s proposed “contingency orbit” is an attractive risk reduction asset: the one-day sub-cycle overlaps of adjoining swaths would provide a good, continuous, and self-sufficient (no need for external nadirs) calibration scheme. The benefit is however essentially located at mid to high-latitudes and it is substantial only for wavelengths longer than 100 km

Investigating the Performance of Four Empirical Cross-Calibration Methods for the Proposed SWOT Mission

The proposed surface water and ocean topography (SWOT) mission aims at observing short scale ocean topography with an unprecedented resolution and accuracy. Its main proposed sensor is a radar interferometer, so a major source of topography error is the roll angle: the relative positions of SWOT’s antennas must be known within a few micrometers. Because reaching SWOT’s stringent requirements with onboard roll values is challenging, we carried out simulations as a contingency strategy (i.e., to be ready if roll is larger than anticipated) that could be used with ground-based data. We revisit the empirical calibration algorithms with additional solving methods (e.g., based on orbit sub-cycle) and more sophisticated performance assessments with spectral decompositions. We also explore the link between the performance of four calibration methods and the attributes of their respective calibration zones: size and geometry (e.g., crossover diamonds), temporal variability (e.g., how many days between overlapping SWOT images). In general, the so-called direct method (using a single SWOT image) yields better coverage and smaller calibrated roll residuals because the full extent of the swath can be used for calibration, but this method makes an extensive use of the external nadir constellation to separate roll from oceanic variability, and it is more prone to leakages from oceanic variability on roll (i.e., true topography signal is more likely to be corrupted if it is misinterpreted as roll) and inaccurate modeling of the true topography spectrum. For SWOT’s baseline orbit (21 days repeat and 10.9 days sub-cycle), three other methods are found to be complementary with the direct method: swath crossovers, external nadir crossovers, and sub-cycle overlaps are shown to provide an additional calibration capability, albeit with complex latitude-varying coverage and performance. The main asset of using three or four methods concurrently is to minimize systematic leakages from oceanic variability or measurement errors, by maximizing overlap zones and by minimizing the temporal variability with one-day to three-day image differences. To that extent, SWOT’s proposed “contingency orbit” is an attractive risk reduction asset: the one-day sub-cycle overlaps of adjoining swaths would provide a good, continuous, and self-sufficient (no need for external nadirs) calibration scheme. The benefit is however essentially located at mid to high-latitudes and it is substantial only for wavelengths longer than 100 km

Sea level and Eddy Kinetic Energy variability in the Bay of Biscay, inferred from satellite altimeter data

Twelve years (1993-2005) of altimetric data, combining different missions (ERS-1/2, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 and Envisat), are used to analyse sea level and Eddy Kinetic Energy variability in the Bay of Biscay at different time-scales. A specific processing of coastal data has been applied, to remove erroneous artefacts. Likewise, an optimal interpolation has been used, to create a series of regional Sea Level Anomaly maps, merging data sets from two satellites. The sea level presents a trend of about 2.7 mm/year, which is within the averaged values of sea level rise in the global ocean. Frequency spectra show that the seasonal cycle is the main time-scale affecting the sea level and Eddy Kinetic Energy variability. The maximum sea level occurs in October, whilst the minimum is observed in April. The steric effect is the cause of this annual cycle. The Northern French shelf/slope presents intense variability which is likely due to internal tides. Some areas of the ocean basin are also characterised by intense variability, due to the presence of eddies. The Eddy Kinetic Energy, in turn, is higher from December to May, than during the rest of the year and presents a weak positive trend from April 1995 to April 2005. Several documented mesoscale events, occurring at the end of 1997 and during 1998, are analysed. Altimetry maps prove to be a useful tool to monitor swoddy-like eddies from their birth to their decay, as well as the inflow of seasonal slope water current into the southeastern corner of the Bay of Biscay. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer Reviewe

Contribution of a constellation of two wide-swath altimetry missions to global ocean analysis and forecasting

Swath altimetry is likely to revolutionize our ability to monitor and forecast ocean dynamics. To meet the requirements of the EU Copernicus Marine Service, a constellation of two wide-swath altimeters is envisioned for the long-term (post-2030) evolution of the Copernicus Sentinel 3 topography mission. A series of observing system simulation experiments (OSSEs) is carried out to quantify the expected performances. The OSSEs use a state-of-the-art high-resolution (1/12 degrees) global ocean data assimilation system similar to the one used operationally by the Copernicus Marine Service. Flying a constellation of two wide-swath altimeters will provide a major improvement of our capabilities to monitor and forecast the oceans. Compared to the present situation with three nadir altimeters flying simultaneously, the sea surface height (SSH) analysis and 7 d forecast error are globally reduced by about 50 % in the OSSEs. With two wide-swath altimeters, the quality of SSH 7 d forecasts is equivalent to the quality of SSH analysis errors from three nadir altimeters. Our understanding of ocean currents is also greatly improved (30 % improvements at the surface and 50 % at 300 m depth). The resolution capabilities will be drastically improved and will be closer to 100 km wavelength compared to about 250 km today. Flying a constellation of two wide-swath altimeters thus looks to be a very promising solution for the long-term evolution of the Sentinel 3 constellation and the Copernicus Marine Service

Mesoscale and sub-mesoscale characterization from multi-platform experiments: anticipating SWOT launch

Trabajo presentado en la Ocean Surface Topography Science Team Meeting, celebrada en La Rochelle (Francia), del 1 al 4 de noviembre de 2016Peer Reviewe