RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCES VOL. 10, ES1002, doi:10.2205/2007ES000262, 2008

Research Programme

[18]  This two-year program is specifically oriented to: a) improving satellite altimetry along the coasts of the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black, White and Barents seas and b) to allowing access to the improved data by a Grid-compliant architecture. As such, it has two complementary and interconnected components: one is the definition and development of an advanced altimeter data processing system, and the other is the design and implementation of a structure for efficient access to distributed archives of data.

[19]  The altimeter processing stream will be built upon the Radar Altimeter Data System (RADS) [Schrama et al., 2000] and will extend that system to address coastal user requirements and specific processing issues, by employing corrections optimized for the coastal environment and all available complementary local metocean information from various data sources (e.g., tide gauges and wave sensors; weather stations; high-resolution models; etc.). For example, regional corrective models for the atmospheric and tidal effects will be used, e.g., MOG2D, [Carrère and Lyard, 2003] for the Mediterranean Sea. Any improvement in the quality of the data will be benchmarked against independent in situ measurements. The ALBICOCCA site at Capraia Island (NW Mediterranean), for which there is a long continuity of altimetry monitoring, will be the pilot benchmark site; in addition to it, some coastal sites of opportunity will be selected on the basis of ground-based data availability from cooperative efforts like ESEAS, SELF, SONEL or national networks (e.g., Italian, Russian, Azerbaijan, etc.) in proximity of altimeter ground tracks. For instance, historical and current data on the Caspian Sea level from several coastal meteo stations in Azerbaijan [Mamedov, 1997, 2000; Mamedov et al., 1999] will be used for comparison over that basin. Finally, the processing system will be applied to the whole length of the coast in the major basins.

[20]  The system for efficient access to distributed archives of data will be based upon the Grid concept. Its structure will consist of regional data centres, each one with primary responsibility for maintaining its regional-archives by selecting the best corrections and ensuring quality control. Centres will operate a Grid-compliant set of web-services allowing access to the full functionality of data extraction, and a central web server will provide a simple interface to the web services to give interactive access to users. Particular attention will be devoted to the visualization and dissemination of the product to users such as modellers and forecasters, and to this effect a grid compliant application will be built and demonstrated over a number of case studies. The project will also made available a dissemination package in the form of a DVD, in a fashion similar to what the European Space Agency has done with the "River&Lake Product from Altimetry'' (ENVISAT-ERS, 2004, http://earth.esa.int/riverandlake/docs/Product-Handbook-1-2.pdf).


RJES

Citation: Lebedev, S., A. Sirota, D. Medvedev, S. Khlebnikova, S. Vignudelli, H. M. Snaith, P.  Cipollini, F. Venuti, F. Lyard, J. Bouffard, J. F. Cretaux, F. Birol, L. Roblou, A.  Kostianoy, A. Ginzburg, N. Sheremet, E. Kuzmina, R. Mamedov, K. Ismatova, A.  Alyev, and B. Mustafayev (2008), Exploiting satellite altimetry in coastal ocean through the ALTICORE project, Russ. J. Earth Sci., 10, ES1002, doi:10.2205/2007ES000262.

Copyright 2008 by the Russian Journal of Earth Sciences

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