Absolute Calibration of Jason-1 and Jason-2 Altimeters in Corsica during the Formation Flight Phase

Abstract

The Corsica region of the western Mediterranean, including sites at Ajaccio-Aspretto, Cape Senetosa, and Capraia (Italy), hosts a dedicated, long-term experiment to support absolute calibration of space-borne radar altimeters. The objective of the experiment is to continuously monitor the bias and drift of the altimeter measurement systems. In addition, with complementary data from a local weather station, we have derived GPS-based wet tropospheric path delay measurements that are compared with those from the on-board Microwave Radiometers at the overflight times. In this article, we focus on the analysis of data from the Formation Flight Phase of Jason-1 and Jason-2.