Jason-1 Altimeter Ground Processing Look-Up Correction Tables

Poseidon-2 is the dual frequency radar altimeter embarked on the CNES/NASA oceanographic satellite Jason-1 that was launched on 7 December 2001. The primary objective of the Jason-1 mission is to continue the high accuracy time series of altimeter measurements that began with TOPEX in 1992. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to improve each component of the ground processing continually. Among these components are the look-up correction tables that are used to correct the estimations (range, significant waveheight, and sigma naught) issued from the retracking algorithms (on-board and ground). Look-up tables were first computed taking into account the prelaunch characteristics of the altimeter. They have to be updated to take into account better all the in-flight characteristics of the altimeter and all the updated ground algorithms that can impact the estimation process. The aim of this article is to describe the radar altimeter simulator of performances that has been used to compute look-up tables, to display the freshly computed look-up tables, and to discuss the consequences of these new corrections on the products provided to the users. The updated look-up correction tables allow improvement of SWH estimation, in particular with respect to TOPEX SWH data. It is also shown that no range dependency on SWH has to be looked for in these tables, and that the on-board TOPEX and Poseidon-2 tracking systems may contain the differences explaining the relative sea state bias between both altimeters.