NEWS
- Phase 1 of COASTALT ended on 2 Nov 2009. We now have some deliverables from this phase available in the results page, and the recent presentation given at the AGU 2009 FM that summarizes our main results and findings.
- All the papers, presentations and posters from Phase 1 are available via the COASTALT outputs page.
- Phase 2 started on 14 December 2009, extending to March 2011.
- A Springer-Verlag book, Coastal Altimetry, is almost finished and will be published in early 2010
The COASTALT Project
COASTALT is a Project on "Development of Radar Altimetry Data Processing in the Coastal Zone" funded by the European Space Agency (ESA/ESRIN contract 21201/08/I-LG) whose main objective is to contribute to the transition of pulse-limited coastal altimetry towards a mature, pre-operational status
, by defining and testing new coastal radar altimeter products. This is ultimately to prepare the way for a routine generation and distribution of such products by ESA, first from the RA-2 altimeter on board Envisat but then also from the instruments on ERS-1 and ERS-2 (and Sentinel-3 in the future).
The rationale - or why we need COASTALT
While altimetry over the open ocean is a mature discipline, incredibly useful both for process studies and operational forecasting, in the coastal zone (the strip within a few tens of km from the coast) data are often discarded (i.e. flagged as bad) simply because we do not know well how to interpret/model land effects on the altimetric waveforms, and/or lack adequate corrections for various effects such as path delays, coastal tides, high frequency atmospheric signals. But we believe that the information hidden in those 'bad data' can be recovered - and that once that is done, that information will be invaluable to study the very region where the impact of the changing ocean on society is strongest - the coastal strip. Recovering that information requires the development of ad hoc techniques for processing the raw atlimetric data in proximity of the coast, but once those techniques are up and running, more than 17 years of data from several missions are ready to be reprocessed in the archives... a tantalizing prospect! To know more on the role of Coastal Altimetry, including examples of its application, see this recent paper by the international community of altimetrists.
Partnership
Several European institutions, the COASTALT partners, take part in the Project, which is led by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
Tasks
En route to the overall object - developing coastal altimetry - we do a number of useful things:
- carry out an extensive study of the possible improvements in geophysical corrections, and identifying the best strategies to apply them in the coastal zone
- revisit the whole approach to waveform retracking, by assessing the capabilities of physically-based retrackers in the coastal ocean, testing novel retracking schemes and strategies, identifying the best candidate strategies for immediate application and implementing them into a fully usable prototype of the processing software (the COASTALT processor), while at the same time seeding the research into the next generation or retrackers for Sentinel-3
- assess the performance of the new retracked products over some pilot regions with different characteristics, where a host of in situ measurements are available for validation
- provide full documentation on the new product in a way that is consistent with − and can be integrated with − the Envisat User Handbook
COASTALT: linking scientists and users
COASTALT also contains a significant element of capacity building, outreach and dissemination. The project has a dedicated workpackage on the assessment of user requirements and another one on outreach, that includes the creation of a Coastal Altimetry Science Working Team mailing list, acting as a scientific and operational forum as well as an incubator of new ideas in this novel field of altimetry. And - last but not least - the Project has been and is directly involved in the organization and running of the Coastal Altimetry Workshops (CA-WS):
For more information contact the COASTALT project coordinator Dr. Paolo Cipollini of NOCS
Access the COASTALT DAS - Document Archive Site (COASTALT Project partners only)
by Paolo Cipollini
