Copy of record Global Remote Sensing Merged Multi-Mission Monthly Gridded Significant Wave Height from Altimetry, L4 Product, Version 3, from ESA Sea State CCI

The ESA Sea State Climate Change Initiative (CCI) project has produced global multi-sensor time-series of along-track satellite altimeter significant wave height data (referred to as Level 4 (L4) data) with a particular focus for use in climate studies.

This dataset contains the Version 4 Remote Sensing Significant Wave Height product, gridded over a global regular cylindrical projection (1°x1° resolution), averaging valid and good measurements from all available altimeters on a monthly basis (using the L2P products also available). These L4 products are meant for statistics and visualization.

The altimeter data used in the Sea State CCI dataset v3 come from multiple satellite missions spanning from 1992 to 2023 (ERS-1, ERS-2,TOPEX-Poseidon, Envisat, CryoSat-2, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3, SARAL, Sentinel-3 A, Sentinel-3 B, Sentinel-6 A), therefore spanning over a wider time range than the previous version 3. The missions already retracked (with WHALES) in version 3 were not reprocessed, but extended when applicable. Many altimeters are bi-frequency (Ku-C or Ku-S) and only measurements in Ku band were used, for consistency reasons, being available on each altimeter but SARAL (Ka band).