Accuracy Evaluation of CFOSAT SWIM L2 Products Based on NDBC Buoy and Jason-3 Altimeter Data

Abstract

Chinese-French Oceanography Satellite (CFOSAT), the first satellite which can observe global ocean wave and wind synchronously, was successfully launched On 29 October 2018. The CFOSAT carries SWIM that can observe ocean wave on a global scale. Based on National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) buoys and Jason-3 altimeter data, this study evaluated the accuracy of L2 level products of CFOSAT SWIM from August 2019 to September 2020. The results show that the accuracy of the nadir Significant Wave Height (SWH) data of the SWIM wave spectrometer is good. Compared with the data of the NDBC buoys and Jason-3 altimeter, the RMSE of the nadir box SWH were 0.39 and 0.21 m, respectively. The variation trend of SWH were first increasing and then decreasing with the increasing of the wave height. The precision of off-nadir wave spectrum SWH is not better than nadir box SWH data. Accuracy was evaluated for off-nadir data from August 2019 to June 2020 and after June 2020, respectively. After linear regression correction, the accuracy of off-nadir wave spectrum SWH was improved. The data accuracy evaluation and comparison of different time period showed that the off-nadir wave spectrum SWH accuracy was improved after the data version was updated in June 2020, especially for 6° and 8° wave spectrum. The precision of off-nadir wave spectrum SWH decreases with the increasing of wave height. The accuracy of the dominant wave direction of each wave spectrum is also not very good, and the accuracy of the dominant wave direction of 10° wave spectrum is slightly better than the others. In general, the accuracy of SWIM nadir beam SWH data reaches the high data accuracy of traditional altimeter, while the accuracy of off-nadir wave spectrum SWH is less than that of nadir beam SWH data. The off-nadir SWH data accuracy after June 2020 has been greatly improved.