Blooms ofσ0in the TOPEX Radar Altimeter Data

Abstract

Abstract Data from satellite altimeters are often degraded by the occurrence of unrealistically high radar return cross sections, which indicate a breakdown of the rough surface scattering model used to interpret these measurements in terms of satellite to sea surface height ranges. The TOPEX altimetric data are examined and nearly 200 000 such events during the 7-yr period, 1993–99, inclusive, are identified. The primary purpose of this paper is to make a comprehensive description of where and when these events occur, which is important because many of the communities that make use of the TOPEX data are generally unaware of this phenomenon. It is shown that these events affect almost 6% of the over-ocean TOPEX data, but only approximately 60% of these events are rejected by the recommended TOPEX data flagging. A global description of these events is made, showing that the events are associated with regions of climatologically weak winds (e.g., the summer hemispheres and the western Pacific warm pool regi...