AUTHOR=Benkiran Mounir , Le Traon Pierre-Yves , Rémy Elisabeth , Drillet Yann TITLE=Impact of two high resolution altimetry mission concepts on ocean forecasting JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science VOLUME=11 YEAR=2024 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2024.1465065 DOI=10.3389/fmars.2024.1465065 ISSN=2296-7745 ABSTRACT=

Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) with the Mercator Ocean/Copernicus Marine global 1/12° data assimilation system have been carried out to compare and quantify the expected performance of two high resolution altimetry mission concepts envisioned for the long-term evolution (post-2032) of the Copernicus Sentinel-3 topography mission. The two mission concepts are a constellation of two wide-swath altimeters and a constellation of 12 nadir altimeters. These two configurations greatly improve ocean forecasting and monitoring capabilities. Compared to a constellation of three nadir altimeters (the present configuration), analysis and forecast errors are reduced by a factor of 2. Our results also show that a constellation of two wide-swath altimeters has better performance than a constellation of 12 nadirs. Compared to a constellation of 12 nadirs, the error of the Sea Surface Height (SSH) forecast of a two wide swath constellation is reduced by 14% overall. Improvements are also observed when analyzing surface currents and Lagrangian diagnostics. A constellation of two wide-swath altimeters thus seems to be a very promising concept for the long-term evolution of the Sentinel-3 topography mission.