SARAL/ALtiKa results were presented at the 7th Coastal Altimetry Workshop (CAW-7)
In August 2013, the scientific team lead by Dr. Ananda Pascual (IMEDEA CSIC-UIB), performed the first campaign of the MyOcean2 project using the new satellite SARAL/AltiKa – which yields high-precision altimetry, especially in the coastal area-, with the objective of validating the data provided by this satellite.
The combined use of data provided by the new French-Indian satellite SARAL/Altika and those from the most recent technologies in oceanography from SOCIB (high-frequency Radar, gliders and drifting buoys) gave to the scientific community data with the highest resolution obtained until now in the Ibiza Channel area, thanks to the work of a team of scientists from the Mediterranean Institute of Advance Studies (CSIC-UIB) and SOCIB.
During the campaign, IMEDEA scientists, in collaboration with the Balearic Islands Coastal Ocean Observing and Forecasting System (SOCIB), dropped various drifting buoys (measuring the trajectory and current velocity at the surface), a glider (measuring parameters such as pressure, temperature and salinity) which followed the trajectory of the French-Indian satellite, all of this combined with the use of the high-resolution radar that the SOCIB installed in the Ibiza Channel (and which performs measurements of the surface currents from 3 km to 60 km offshore).
After the field work and the data analysis, the scientific team presented their results in the last Coastal Altimetry Workshop organized by the European Spatial Agency (ESA), where it highlighted the importance of the combined used of these new technologies in the oceanography study. As told the researcher from IMEDEA: “the satellites bring information about the ocean surface (temperature, sea level, roughness, , chlorophyll concentration, …), while the gliders sample the subsurface layers of the sea (until 1000 m depth). The combination of both sensors allows one to generate a 3D image of the ocean, more accurate and illustrative for the data interpretation. What we have accomplished with this campaign was to improve the resolution of 1hz a 40hz data, and getting closer to the coast. We were able to sample a coastal current (at an approximate distance of 5-7 km southwest of Ibiza) with an unprecedented resolution”. All this, thanks to the new technology aboard SARAL/AltiKa, which, because it works in the Ka-band, allows a lower contamination from land and a subtancial reduction of the signal noise, in comparison with its predecessor ENVISAT.
