Long-term validation of the significant wave height product of HY-2 altimeter

摘要

Since August 2011, the HY-2 satellite has been launched successfully, and it has provided almost continuous wave height measurements for more than 4 years. Before using these data, the measurements need to be validated. Based on the in-situ buoys from the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) and Jason-2 altimeter, the HY-2 Ku-band significant wave height (SWH) measurements were validated and have been corrected using a linear regression with in-situ measurements. Compared with NDBC SWH, the validation results of HY-2 SWH show a RMS (Root Mean Square) of 0.33 m, which is similar to Jason-1 and Jason-2 data with the RMS of 0.35 m and 0.37 m respectively; the RMS of corrected HY-2 SWH is 0.30 m, similar to 0.27 m and 0.23 m of corrected Jason-1 and Jason-2 data. Therefore the accuracy of HY-2 SWH products is close to that of Jason-1/2 SWH data, and the linear regression function derived can improve the accuracy of HY-2 SWH products.