Instrument Processing Facility for CryoSat Ocean Products
Urien, Stephanie1; Dumont, Jean-Paul1; Guibbaud, Marielle1; Ollivier, Annabelle1; Amarouche, Laïba1; Moreau, Thomas1; Poisson, Jean-Christophe1; Mantovani, Pier-Luca2; Guinle, Thierry3; Féménias, Pierre4; Bouzinac, Catherine4
1CLS, FRANCE; 2ACS, ITALY; 3CNES, FRANCE; 4ESA, ITALY

A Cryosat Instrument Processing Facility (IPF) dedicated to Ocean products has been developed by ACS and CLS, on ESA request. The objective of this new IPF is to support the generation of two additional Level 1B and Level 2 Ocean products: the Interim Ocean Products (IOP), available in 2-3 days, and the Geophysical Ocean Product (GOP), available in about 30 days after acquisition. In its first release, delivered in the first half of 2013, Cryosat Ocean IPF is able to process both LRM and SAR data, SAR data being down-processed in a pseudo-LRM mode. The processing baseline is the CNES library of multi-missions algorithms for altimetry used for the operational processing of the Jason-1, Jason-2 and ENVISAT missions (off-line processing only for ENVISAT mission).
The definition of the content of the new ocean products will be presented, together with a definition of the processing performed. First results from the software validation phase will be presented as well, including a comparison on some tracks with CNES Cryosat prototype (CPP) and NOAA Cryosat products. These results enable to assess the new Ocean Processor developed and should be complemented by a future complete validation of the geophysical content on a larger period and geographical coverage and including comparison to other missions.