The Gavdos calibration facility for satellite radar altimeters has been operational as of 2004. The island is located along repeating ground tracks of Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellites (crossover point for passes No.109 ascending and No.018 descending and adjacent to Envisat), and because of its small size, both altimeter and radiometer measurements are not significantly contaminated by land. This makes Gavdos an ideal place for the calibration of satellite altimeters. In this work, three different techniques have been applied for calibrating the Jason altimeter measurements at Gavdos Cal/Val facility. These are: (i) The conventional: In-situ observations made by tide gauges, GNSS receivers, meteorological and other sensors in conjunction with precise geoid models are applied for determining the altimeter bias; (ii) The MSS: instead of the geoid, the mean sea level, provided by the CLS10_MSS model, is used as a reference surface for estimating the bias; and (iii) Microwave transponder measurements are implemented and examined over the cross over point on land to produce the altimeter bias as well. This paper presents the results regarding these calibration techniques.

Date Published: 18 October 2010
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 7825, Remote Sensing of the Ocean, Sea Ice, and Large Water Regions 2010, 78250C (18 October 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.865991

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7825:
Remote Sensing of the Ocean, Sea Ice, and Large Water Regions 2010
Charles R. Bostater Jr.; Stelios P. Mertikas; Xavier Neyt; Miguel Velez-Reyes, Editor(s)