EXTENDING THE USE OF SATELLITE ALTIMETRY FOR COASTAL APPLICATIONS: THE ALTICORE PROJECT

While research in satellite altimetry has a long history over the open ocean, in coastal seas it is still at a very young stage. The reasons are mainly due to intrinsic limitations of the technology (e.g. sampling) and difficulties in processing and interpretation (e.g., proximity of land, control of seabed, rapid variations due to tides and atmospheric effects); however there are also unexploited possibilities (e.g., higher along track data rates, multi-altimetry scenario). Satellite altimetry currently has an observational record of almost 15 years from a series of missions starting in the early 1990s. This huge amount of unused data over the coastal regions needs to be re-analyzed, improved and more efficiently exploited. The altimeter-derived information on sea level and sea state would be extremely important for resolving the complex dynamics of the coastal ocean. However, the processing requirements of coastal altimetry are complex and necessitate of specialist attention and integration with local knowledge or ancillary information. Since 1st December 2006 a research project called ALTICORE (ALTImetry for COastal REgions- www.alticore.eu) and will run over a period of two years. This project is a contribution to bridging the current altimetry gap over coastal areas, by improving th