Assessment of Reprocessed Sea Surface Height Measurements Derived From Hy-2A/GM Altimeter Data

Abstract

Since March 2016, the HY-2A satellite has swifted to the drift orbit with a repeat cycle of 168 days and has accumulated geodetic data for more than two years. This paper assesses the reprocessed sea surface height (SSH) measurements derived from the HY-2A geodetic mission (GM) data. The standard deviation of the SSH crossover differences for reprocessed HY-2A/GM data is 5.22 cm, which is close to the results from Jason-2 (5.49 cm) and Jason-3 (5.35 cm). The standard deviations of the SSH crossover differences between HY-2A and Jason-2 and Jason-3 are 5.25 cm and 5.31 cm, respectively. Sea level anomaly (SLA) power spectra analysis shows that the reprocessed HY-2A data have low noise level with respect to Jason-2 and Jason-3.