Envisat RA-2 Geophysical Data Record - GDR [RA2_GDR__2P]

This is a RA-2 Geophysical Data Record (GDR) Full Mission Reprocessing (FMR) v3 product containing radar range and orbital altitude, wind speed, wave height, water vapour from the MWR and geophysical corrections. This FMR follows the first Envisat Altimetry reprocessing Version (V2.1) completed in 2012. The GDR and S-GDR data products were reprocessed for all cycles from 6 to 113 (May 2002 to April 2012) into a homogeneous standard in NetCDF format (close to Sentinel-3).

For many aspects, the V3.0 reprocessed data are better than the previous dataset:

• In terms of available and valid data, the coverage is better, notably thanks to a better availability of MWR data at the beginning of the mission
• In terms of performance at cross-overs, the quality is improved: the annual signal and average of Mean SSH is decreased, as well as the standard deviation
• The new MWR characteristics were shown to improve largely the global quality of data. As well as the new tide model, the new MSS and the new orbit standard
• The Global and regional Mean Sea Level trend is very weakly impacted though the effort was put, this time, on the mesoscale restitution, rather than long term drift, as during V2.1 reprocessing

Please consult the Envisat RA-2/MWR Product Quality Readme file PDF before using the data.