Continental surface waters from satellite altimetry

Monitoring continental water flows is required to meet human needs and to assess ongoing climate changes. However, regular gauging networks fail to provide the information needed for spatial coverage and timely delivery. Although the missions did not initially focus on hydrology, ten years of satellite altimetry have furnished complementary data that can be used for the creation of such hydrological products as time series of stages, discharges, river altitude profiles or levelling of in-situ stations. However, raw data still suffer uncertainties from one to several decimetres and require specific reprocessing of raw data, such as waveform retracking or geophysical correction editing.