Assessment of reprocessed sea surface height measurements derived from HY-2A radar altimeter and its application to the observation of 2015–2016 El Ni?o

Haiyang-2A(HY-2A) is China's first ocean dynamic environment satellite and the radar altimeter is one of its main payloads. One of the main purposes of the radar altimeter is to measure the sea surface height(SSH). The SSH determined from the altimeter range measurements includes some range and geophysical corrections. These corrections largely affect the accuracy of the SSH measurements. The range and the geophysical corrections are reprocessed and the altimeter waveforms in HY-2A sensor interim geophysical data set records(S-IGDR) are retracked from June 1, 2014 to June 14, 2014, and the accuracy of the reprocessed SSH measurements is evaluated.The methods of the range and geophysical corrections used to reprocess HY-2A altimeter data are validated by using these methods to reprocess the Jason-2 range and geophysical corrections and comparing the results with the range and geophysical corrections in Jason-2 geophysical dataset records(GDR) product. A crossover analysis is used to evaluate the accuracy of the reprocessed HY-2A SSH measurements. The standard deviation(STD) of the crossover SSH differences for HY-2A is around 4.53 cm while the STD of the SSH differences between HY-2A and Jason-2 is around 5.22 cm. The performance of the reprocessed HY-2A SSH measurements is significantly improved with respect to the SSH measurements derived from HY-2A interim geophysical dataset records(IGDR)product. The 2015–2016 El Ni?o has been the strongest El Ni?o event since 1997–1998. The range and the geophysical corrections in HY-2A IGDR are reprocessed and sea level anomalies are used to monitor the2015–2016 El Ni?o. The results show that the HY-2A altimeter can well observe the 2015–2016 El Ni?o.     

HY-2A/GM高度计数据反演的初步海洋重力场

HY-2 A(Haiyang-2 A), launched in 2011, is the first ocean dynamic environment satellite of China and is equipped with a radar altimeter as one of the primary payloads. HY-2 A shifted the drift orbit in March 2016 and has been accumulating geodetic mission(GM) data for more than three years with 168-day cycle. In this paper, we present the preliminary gravity field inverted by the HY-2 A/GM data from March 2016 to December 2017 near Taiwan(21°–26°N, 119°–123°E). The gravity anomaly is computed by Inverse Vening Meinesz(IVM) formula with a onedimensional FFT method during remove-restore procedure with the EGM2008 gravity model as the reference field. For comparison, CryoSat-2 altimeter data are used to inverse the gravity field near Taiwan Island by the same method. Comparing with the gravity field derived from CryoSat-2, a good agreement between the two data sets is found. The global ocean gravity models and National Geophysical Data Center(NGDC) shipboard gravity data also are used to assess the performance of HY-2 A/GM data. The evaluations show that HY-2 A and CryoSat-2 are at the same level in terms of gravity field recovery and the HY-2 A/GM altimeter-derived gravity field has an accuracy of 2.922 mGal. Therefore, we can believe that HY-2 A will be a new reliable data source for marine gravity field inversion and has the potentiality to improve the accuracy and resolution of the global marine gravity field.