Introduction HYDROCOASTAL is a two year project funded by ESA, with the
objective to maximise exploitation of SAR and SARin altimeter
measurements in the coastal zone and inland waters, by evaluating and
implementing new approaches to process SAR and SARin data from
CryoSat-2, and SAR altimeter data from Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B.
Optical data from Sentinel-2 MSI and Sentinel-3 OLCI instruments will
also be used in generating River Discharge products. New SAR and SARin
processing algorithms for the coastal zone and inland waters will be
developed and implemented and evaluated through an initial Test Data Set
for selected regions. From the results of this evaluation a processing
scheme will be implemented to generate global coastal zone and river
discharge data sets. A series of case studies will assess these products
in terms of their scientific impacts. All the produced data sets will be
available on request to external researchers, and full descriptions of
the processing algorithms will be provided Objectives The scientific
objectives of HYDROCOASTAL are to enhance our understanding of
interactions between the inland water and coastal zone, between the
coastal zone and the open ocean, and the small scale processes that
govern these interactions. Also the project aims to improve our
capability to characterize the variation at different time scales of
inland water storage, exchanges with the ocean and the impact on
regional sea-level changes The technical objectives are to develop and
evaluate new SAR and SARin altimetry processing techniques in support of
the scientific objectives, including stack processing, and filtering,
and retracking. Also an improved Wet Troposphere Correction will be
developed and evaluated. Presentation The presentation will describe the
different SAR altimeter processing algorithms that are being evaluated
in the first phase of the project, and present results from the
evaluation of the initial test data set focusing on performance at the
coast. It will also present the results of a study assessing regional
tidal models.