| Summary: |
COASTALT was 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 was 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 now also Cryosat-2, plus Sentinel-3 in the future). In phase 1 of the project (CCn2) the UPorto contribution was focused on two main aspects: 1. Wet tropospheric correction - contribution to Work Package 2 (Geophysical corrections in the coastal zone). 2. Geophysical validation and performance assessment - contribution to Work Package 5. In phase 2 of the project (CCn3) the UPorto contribution to "EWP2 - Corrections: improvement and updating" was focused on two main aspects: 1. To extend the work done in WP2 of ESA/ESRIN Contract No. 21201/08/I-LG (CCN 2 ) on the development of the GNSS-derived Path delay (GPD) approach to compute the wet tropospheric correction for coastal altimetry, to reach the maturity required for an operational and desirable global implementation; 2. To compute a local tide model with a uniform spatial and temporal resolution for the whole West Iberian region. |