Data-Driven Calibration of SWOT’s Systematic Errors: First In-Flight Assessment

The SWOT satellite, carrying the KaRIN first wide-swath onboard altimeter, was launched in December 2022, and has now delivered more than a year of surface water elevation data over the ocean and inland lakes/rivers. These data are affected by systematic errors which constitute the dominant part of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Clément Ubelmann, Gérald Dibarboure, Benjamin Flamant, Antoine Delepoulle, Maxime Vayre, Yannice Faugère, Pierre Prandi, Matthias Raynal, Frédéric Briol, Geoffroy Bracher, Emeline Cadier
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-09-01
Series:Remote Sensing
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/16/19/3558
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Summary:The SWOT satellite, carrying the KaRIN first wide-swath onboard altimeter, was launched in December 2022, and has now delivered more than a year of surface water elevation data over the ocean and inland lakes/rivers. These data are affected by systematic errors which constitute the dominant part of the error budget at scales larger than a few thousands of kilometers. Some strategies for their estimation and calibration were explored during the pre-launch studies with performance estimations. Now, based on the real data, we propose in this study to assess the systematic error budget with statistical methods relying on spectral and co-spectral analysis. From this assessment, suggesting very low error levels (below requirements), we propose the implementation of the calibration algorithms at Level-2 and Level-3 with a few minor adjustments justified by the error spectra. The calibrated products are then validated with usual CalVal metrics.
ISSN:2072-4292