This report contains a summary of information on the Cryo-TEMPO Coastal Oceans products for Jan 2023. For detailed information and statistics on all parameters, please use the product viewer.
This section shows the availability of Cryo-TEMPO Coastal Oceans products during Jan 2023.
As each orbit may be split in to several Cryo-TEMPO files, the number of files and orbits may be different.
| Product Area | Number of Orbits | Number of Files |
|---|---|---|
| Mediterranean | 117 | 117 |
The primary parameter measured for the ocean is sea level anomaly (i.e. the elevation of sea level with respect to the reference mean sea surface). This section shows the statistics of the number of sea level anomaly measurements that passed or failed the Cryo-TEMPO processor quality tests for Jan 2023.
In the Coastal Ocean product, failed measurements include land observations and invalid ocean observations. Invalid ocean measurements primarily occur over rough sea surface conditions (e.g. large significant wave heights, rain events ...) or in proximity to the coast. In both situations, the distorted returned returned radar waveform makes it difficult to accurately identify the sea surface elevation.
| Area | Number Valid | Number Invalid | %Valid | %Invalid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mediterranean | 224496 | 8709 | 96.27 | 3.73 |
The filtered sea level anomaly is obtained by applying a low-pass Lanczos filter. This field is specifically intended for the non-expert altimetry users since it is smoother and does not include the invalid measurements.
Maps of valid sea level anomalies and also failure locations (shown in red in the smaller map) over the Mediterranean basin for Jan 2023 are displayed below.
The estimated uncertainty of each elevation measurement is provided in the uncertainty parameter. SLA Uncertainty for coastal ocean is estimated as the sum of a location dependent large-wavelength error and a short-wavelength error which varies as a function of SWH and distance from the coast and is directly computed from the CO TDP. Filtered SLA uncertianty is obtained via weighted error propagation of the SLA uncertainties. Maps of uncertainty over the Mediterranean basin for Jan 2023 are provided below. The largest uncertainties are predominantly associated with large significant wave heights.
The quality flag identifies valid ocean observations (green points) and invalid ocean observations (red points). A map of quality flag over the Mediterranean basin for Jan 2023 is provided below:
The accuracy of CryoSat-2 CryoTEMPO filtered sea level anomaly measurements is estimated through comparison with external in-situ observations collected by an array of 18 tide gauges in the western Mediterranean Sea. These observations are available from the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) In Situ Thematic Assembly Centre (INS-TAC) data repository (www.marineinsitu.eu). The tide gauge records were processed according to Sanchez-Roman et al. (2020). Overall, correlations between 0.4 and 0.9 and RMSD between 3 and 5.5 cm are observed.
| Issue | Description |
|---|---|
| SarIn observations | SarIn observations are currently not included in the product. As such, a large portion of the Aegean sea remains uncovered starting from December 2015 when the version 3.7 of the CryoSat-2 geographical mode mask (http://earth.esa.int/eogateway/instruments/siral/description) was introduced. SarIn observations will be included in future versions of the dataset. |
| Regional Tide Limitations | The regional tide model currently used for the production of the CO TDP do not extend to the Balck Sea. Over that basin the FES2014 tides provided with the official CryoSat products are used instead. Furthermore, the regional tide product does not include the loading tide (i.e. the Earth’s crust deformation induced by the ocean tide). The loading tide available from the product is used, instead. This is associated with the FES2014 solution. Although the Noveltis and the FES2014 tides are similar, a dedicated regional loading tide should be used in the future to further improve the CO product accuracy. |
The Coastal Ocean Cryo-TEMPO products for November 2021 are processed from original lower level ESA CS2 L1b and L2 GOP Baseline-C products (https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/missions/cryosat/products). For more information on applicable ESA CS2 L1b and L2 products, users may wish to consult the CS2 baseline-C Evolutions documents from ESA (https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/documents/20142/37627/Baseline-C-Ocean-Main-Evolutions-and-Data-Quality-Status-Summary.pdf).
Report by the Cryo-TEMPO science team, created by MSSL (UCL) on 29/04/2025