ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF GEOSAT ALTIMETER CORRECTIONS

Measurements of sea level by a satellite altimeter require a number of corrections for atmospheric and geophysical effects. We have examined the effectiveness of a large suite of correction terms for Geosat by studying how each correction affects the variances of altimetric sea-surface height differences. Most corrections were found to provide a significant reduction in variance, the most important exception being certain short-period wet-troposphere corrections. Our procedure of using height differences implies nothing about the time-invariant parts of corrections.