Exploitation of radar altimeter data over coastal areas has always been problematic as a consequence of contamination of waveforms due to land or very calm waters in the radar footprint, and inaccurate tidal and wet tropospheric corrections.
Exploitation of radar altimeter data over coastal areas has always been problematic as a consequence of contamination of waveforms due to land or very calm waters in the radar footprint, and inaccurate tidal and wet tropospheric corrections.
Accurate information about significant wave height (SWH) and its variability may benefit different types of studies (sediment transport analysis, storm surges, wave forecasting, models of atmospheric and ocean circulation...). The COASTALT project developed, implemented and tested a prototype software processor to generate more accurate coastal altimetry products for Envisat RA2 data.
About 7 years (Dec. 2002-Jan 2010) of altimeter observations acquired over the continental shelf in front of the Guadalquivir estuary mouth (Spain) have been processed and results were compared with standard GDR products and validated with collocated and concurrent buoy/mooring data.