Samuel Osina
Supervisors: Frederic Nouguier, Fabrice Ardhuin, Alejandro Bohe
Funding : 50% Region Bretagne, 50% CNES
Start Date : Decembre 2023
Sea surface altimeters face a phenomenon called Sea State Bias (SSB), which is a measurement bias due to the presence of waves on the surface of the ocean. Currently the SSB is corrected using empirical tables with a large set of parameters. The aim of this PHD thesis is to get a better understanding of the SSB and its signature in SWOT's data.
SWOT is a satellite launched in December 2022 that use the principle of interferometry. From the phase shift difference between its 10 meters apart two antennas, the sea level can be derived.
The tools at our disposal are :
- The wave and currents theory and their interactions
- SWOT's data provided by CNES
- The R3S simulator developped by F.Nouguier that simulates a simplified ocean over which flies a customizable satellite and the response it gets to the electromagnetic pulses it sends.
The first part of this PHD will be devoted to the familiarization with the SWOT instrument and its data processing methods. The R3S simulator will be used in parallel in order to compare its outputs with the data. Then a theoretical study will be led to estimate the correlation between the wave height and the surface current.