Major improvement of altimetry sea level estimations using pressure derived corrections based on ERA-interim atmospheric reanalysis
Abstract. New Dynamic Atmospheric Correction (DAC) and Dry Tropospheric (DT) correction derived from the ERA-Interim meteorological reanalysis have been computed on the 1992-2013 altimeter period. Using these new corrections improves significantly sea-level estimations for short temporal signals (< 2 months); the impact is stronger if considering old altimeter missions (ERS-1, ERS-2, TP), for which DAC_ERA allows reducing the residual variance at crossovers by more than 10 cm2 in the Southern Ocean and in some shallow water regions. The impact of DT_ERA is also significant in the southern high latitudes for these missions. Using the ERA-interim forcing has the greatest positive impact on the first decade of altimetry, then this impact diminishes until giving similar results as the operational forcing from year 2002. Concerning more recent missions (Jason-1, Jason-2, and Envisat), results are very similar between ERA-Interim and ECMWF based corrections: on average on global ocean, the operational DAC becomes slightly better than DAC_ERA only from year 2006, likely due to the switch to a higher resolution of operational forcing. At regional scale, both DACs are similar in deep ocean but DAC_ERA raises the residual crossovers variance in some shallow water regions. On the second decade of altimetry, unexpectedly DT_ERA still gives better results compared to the operational DT. Concerning climate signals, both DAC_ERA and DT_ERA have a low impact on global MSL trend, but they can have a strong impact on long-term regional trends estimation, until several mm/yr locally.