TY - JOUR

T1 - Altimetry for the future

T2 - Building on 25 years of progress

AU - International Altimetry Team

AU - Abdalla, Saleh

AU - Abdeh Kolahchi, Abdolnabi

AU - Adusumilli, Susheel

AU - Aich Bhowmick, Suchandra

AU - Alou-Font, Eva

AU - Amarouche, Laiba

AU - Andersen, Ole Baltazar

AU - Antich, Helena

AU - Aouf, Lotfi

AU - Arbic, Brian

AU - Armitage, Thomas

AU - Arnault, Sabine

AU - Artana, Camila

AU - Aulicino, Giuseppe

AU - Ayoub, Nadia

AU - Badulin, Sergei

AU - Baker, Steven

AU - Banks, Chris

AU - Bao, Lifeng

AU - Barbetta, Silvia

AU - Barceló-Llull, Bàrbara

AU - Barlier, François

AU - Basu, Sujit

AU - Bauer-Gottwein, Peter

AU - Becker, Matthias

AU - Beckley, Brian

AU - Bellefond, Nicole

AU - Belonenko, Tatyana

AU - Benkiran, Mounir

AU - Benkouider, Touati

AU - Bennartz, Ralf

AU - Benveniste, Jérôme

AU - Bercher, Nicolas

AU - Berge-Nguyen, Muriel

AU - Bettencourt, Joao

AU - Blarel, Fabien

AU - Blazquez, Alejandro

AU - Blumstein, Denis

AU - Bonnefond, Pascal

AU - Borde, Franck

AU - Bouffard, Jérôme

AU - Boy, François

AU - Boy, Jean Paul

AU - Brachet, Cédric

AU - Brasseur, Pierre

AU - Braun, Alexander

AU - Brocca, Luca

AU - Brockley, David

AU - Vuglinskii, Valerii

AU - Zinchenko, Vadim

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 COSPAR Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/7/1

Y1 - 2021/7/1

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Coastal oceanography

KW - Cryospheric sciences

KW - Hydrology

KW - Oceanography

KW - Satellite altimetry

KW - Sea level

KW - RIVER DISCHARGE

KW - SATELLITE ALTIMETRY

KW - WAVE PERIOD

KW - MIXED-LAYER EDDIES

KW - LEVEL VARIATIONS

KW - RADAR ALTIMETRY

KW - GLOBAL OCEAN

KW - ARCTIC SEA-ICE

KW - IN-SITU

KW - WIND-SPEED

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85103075118&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/6b6803ca-43ff-3d83-b4a7-b377425a90cd/

U2 - 10.1016/j.asr.2021.01.022

DO - 10.1016/j.asr.2021.01.022

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85103075118

VL - 68

SP - 319

EP - 363

JO - Advances in Space Research

JF - Advances in Space Research

SN - 0273-1177

IS - 2

ER -