[1] In the Indian Ocean, in situ data are sparse both in time and space. Therefore, numerical models are one of the major tools for further understanding of the ocean circulation. We have implemented, validated, and done a 40 year simulation experiment forced by synoptic atmospheric data by using the Miami Isopycnic Coordinate Ocean Model (MICOM) not previously used for the Indian Ocean. The si...

Present global ocean tide models based on the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite data are still not accurate enough on the continental shelves for detailed oceanographic studies. The need for increasing accuracy in shelf regions calls for inclusion of more than just semidiurnal and diurnal constituents in future global ocean tide models. This study is an extension to previous investigations on the Northw...

Contemporary applications of radar altimetry include sea-level rise, ocean circulation, marine gravity, and icesheet elevation change. Unlike InSAR and GNSS, which are widely used to map surface deformation, altimetry is neither reliant on highly temporally-correlated ground features nor as limited by the available spatial coverage, and can provide long-term temporal subsidence monitoring capab...

Almost one year of TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P) and Jason-1 data are processed to analyze the contribution of the tandem mission to mesoscale studies. To merge T/P and Jason-1 sea level anomaly (SLA) data, the main difficulty is to estimate consistent mean profiles for the two missions. An ocean variability correction is thus applied to T/P data before computing the mean profile. As a result, T/P and J...

For over a decade, the Delft precise ERS-1 and ERS-2 orbits have been used in many scientific investigations based on ERS altimeter and interferometric SAR data. This orbit computation is now continued for Envisat, with an unprecedented accuracy due to better tracking data and lower force model errors. Orbit errors due to inaccuracies in the Earth’s gravity model, which have been the main focus...

Sea surface height anomalies measured by the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimeter indicate high values of skewness and kurtosis. Except in a few regions, including the Gulf Stream, the Kuroshio Extension, and the Agulhas Retroflection, which display bimodal patterns of sea surface height variability, kurtosis is uniformly greater than 1.5 times the squared skewness minus an adjustment constant. T...