HR: 08:15h
AN: OS31A-02 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Assuring the Quality and Stability of Sea Surface Height Series from Satellite Altimetry
AU: * Mitchum, G T
EM: mitchum@marine.usf.edu
AF: College of Marine Science University of South Florida, 140 Seventh Ave. South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, United States
AB: Since the launch of TOPEX/Poseidon in 1992 the community has assembled nearly 15 years of continuous sea surface height data from a variety of satellite altimeters. As this record was developed, methods were devised to evaluate the quality of the data via comparisons with in situ sea level observations from the global tide gauge network. In particular, the tide gauge observations have been used to evaluate temporal drift in the altimetric time series that would create difficulties for analyses aimed at studying low frequency variations in the ocean. A brief history of the development of these methods is given, with emphasis on an error analysis for global sea level rise estimates from altimetry. We will also describe the present method for doing these comparisons and show results for a number of satellite altimeter datasets.
DE: 4262 Ocean observing systems
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly