SWOT Postlaunch Oceanography Field Campaign Shipboard CTD and Water Sample Data

The SWOT satellite mission launched in late 2022 and underwent a calibration and validation (cal/val) phase in 2023. As part of cal/val, an array of oceanographic instruments was deployed at a site 300 km offshore of California.

Shipboard data come from four research cruises on the Bold Horizon and the Sally Ride, with different time spans ranging from February 23, 2023 to November 2, 2024. These measurements were used to adjust the calibrations of mooring CTD sensors (deployed in the same field campaign) to a common and well-calibrated reference, to enable the calculation of steric height for SWOT cal/val analyses. Most, but not all of the CTD casts were collected at the actual mooring sites.