Assessment of Retracked Ocean Parameters from Sentinel 3A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Mode Altimetry over the Marginal Seas at Southeast Asia

TL;DR

This study evaluates Sentinel-3A SAR mode altimetry data for sea level measurement in Southeast Asian archipelagos, demonstrating the effectiveness of the SAMOSA+ retracker in complex coastal regions with high accuracy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive assessment of SAR altimetry data quality and introduces the superior performance of the SAMOSA+ retracker over other methods in coastal Southeast Asia.

Findings

91% ocean-like waveforms detected

SAMOSA+ retracker outperforms others in accuracy

All retrackers achieve RMSE <20 cm

Abstract

This paper presents the assessment of altimetric data from Sentinel-3A satellite operating in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode for sea level research studies and applications over the largest archipelagos at Southeast Asia. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments are conducted by analysing the physical shapes of waveforms, comparing with quasi-independent geoidal height data and independent tide gauge measurements. The results identified the percentage of ocean like and non-ocean like waveforms are 91% and 9%, respectively. Off 9% of non-ocean like waveforms, the major class is multi-peak (7%) followed by the quasi-specular waveforms (2%) observed near the coastline (<10 km). Ocean like waveforms typically appear beyond 500 m from the coastline. When comparing with geoidal heights and tide gauge measurements, the performance of sea levels from several retrackers are assessed. The SAMOSA+ retracker outperforms other retrackers (i.e. sub-waveform and modified threshold retrackers with 30%, 20% and 10%). That is, the standard deviation of differences against geoidal heights, and the temporal correlation against tide gauges are superior in most cases. In terms of root mean square error (RMSE), all retrackers are ranging with RMSE <20 cm in all cases. It can be concluded that in general, the SAMOSA+ retracked sea levels are accurate over the complicated regions at the Southeast Asia.