X-Track/Ales Regional Altimeter Product for Coastal Application: Toward a New Multi-Mission Altimetry Product at High Resolution

Abstract

Climate change is likely to worsen many of the problems already facing coastal environments. Sea level change is one of the main threats to coastal areas. Improving its observation is essential to better understand and predict the behaviour of the coastal ocean. Altimetry provides a unique set of long-term measurements to characterize the evolution of sea level variability from the open to the coastal ocean.The X-TRACK processing chain has been developed in order to recover as much altimetry data as possible in coastal areas. X-TRACK has now become a multi-mission altimetry product covering all the coastal oceans. It is produced by the CTOH (Center of Topography of the Ocean and the Hydrosphere). Recently, the Level 2 ALES (Adaptive Leading Edge Subwaveform) retracked product has been included in X-TRACK, as well as the best altimetric corrections available, thus merging the most recent advances in coastal altimetry into in a new high resolution (20 Hz ~ 350 m Level 3 alongtrack product made available for the research community.