Evaluation of Sentinel-6 Altimetry Data over Ocean

The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich (S6-MF) satellite was launched on 21st November 2020. Poseidon-4, the main payload onboard S6-MF, is the first synthetic aperture radar (SAR) altimeter operating in an interleaved open burst mode. In this study, the sea surface height (SSH), significant wave height (SWH) and wind speed observations from the Poseidon-4 Level 2 altimetry products from November 2021 to October 2022 are assessed. The assessment contains synthetic aperture radar mode (SARM) as well as low-resolution mode (LRM) data. The SSH assessment is conducted using range noise, sea level anomaly (SLA) spectral analysis and crossover analysis, whereas the SWH and wind speed assessments are performed against NDBC buoy data and other satellite altimetry missions. The performance of the Sentinel-6 altimetry data is compared to those of Sentinel-3A/B and Jason-3 altimetry data. The 20 Hz range noise is 3.07 cm for SARM and 6.40 cm for LRM when SWH is 2 m. The standard deviation (STD) of SSH differences at crossovers is 3.76 cm for SARM and 4.27 cm for LRM. Compared against the NDBC measurements, the Sentinel-6 SWH measurements have a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.361 m for SARM and an RMSE of 0.225 m for LRM. The Sentinel-6 wind speed measurements show an RMSE of 1.216 m/s for SARM and an RMSE of 1.323 m/s for LRM. We also present the impacts of ocean waves on parameter retrievals from Sentinel-6 SARM data. The Sentinel-6 SARM data are sensitive to wave period and direction as well as vertical velocity. It should be paid attention to in the future.