Monomission Corrected Sea Surface Heights (CorSSH)

Basic GDRs are first validated -bad data are rejected - and all altimetric corrections (environmental and orbit error corrections including the inverse barometer correction) are applied to compute the corrected sea surface height. Improved altimetric corrections are used when available. Given the high accuracy of TOPEX/POSEIDON orbits, no orbit error correction is calculated.

The ERS-1 orbit error is calculated from a global minimization of (TOPEX/POSEIDON , ERS-1) crossover differences. This method provides ERS-1 orbits with an accuracy similar to TOPEX/POSEIDON orbits. It also provides a homogeneous ERS-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON data sets.

CORSSHs are also distributed on CD ROMs (ISO 9660). Each CD ROM contains one year of data, one file per cycle. Each file contains the following fields per second : latitude, longitude, time, corrected sea surface height, orbit error, ocean tide (including loading tide), inverse barometer correction, significant wave height, backscatter coefficient.

Users may thus compute and apply different oceanic tide correction, recalculate electromagnetic bias corrections or chose not to apply inverse barometer effect or orbit error corrections. CORSSHs are swath data and no images. CD ROMs contain read software for UNIX and VMS systems.

User handbooks - one for the CD ROM, one for the data products - are distributed with the first CD ROM.