The HY-2 satellite and its preliminary assessment

Abstract

The HY-2 satellite was successfully launched on 16 August 2011. It carried four microwave instruments into space for operationally observing dynamic ocean environment parameters on a global scale. The HY-2 satellite altimeter provides sea surface height (SSH), significant wave height (SWH), sea surface wind (SSW) speed, and polar ice sheet elevation, while the HY-2 satellite scatterometer provides SSW fields. At the same time, other oceanic and atmospheric parameters such as sea surface temperature (SST) and wind speed, water vapor and liquid water content can also be obtained by its onboard scanning microwave radiometer. In this paper, we show the data processing methods of the HY-2 satellite's payloads. The preliminary results show that wind vector, SSH, SWH, and SST conform to the designed technical specifications.