Improvement of Sentinel-6 range noise with respect to Jason-3

Over the last six months Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich has been orbiting in tandem with current altimetry reference mission, Jason-3, so that the satellites have the same ‘view’ of the ocean. Establishing the differences between Sentinel-6 and Jason-3 is important if stability in the sea-level rise time series from satellite altimetry is to be maintained. The plot shows the standard deviation of re-tracked altimeter range over ocean for different significant wave heights for a full 10-day cycle of Sentinel-6 and Jason-3 using low resolution mode data. Significant wave height is defined as the upper-third of wave height for a given sample of sea state. The plot highlights the improved (lower) range noise from Sentinel-6 compared to Jason-3. The background bar chart shows the percentage number of data points as a function of the significant wave height (0.1 meter binning).

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