Abstract The sea state bias (SSB) is a large source of uncertainty in the estimation of sea level from satellite altimetry. It is still unclear to what extent it depends on errors in parameter estimations (numerical source) or to the wave physics (physical source). By improving the application of this correction we compute 20-Hz sea level anomalies that are about 30% more precise (i.e. less noisy) than the current standards. The improvement is two-fold: first we prove that the SSB correction should be applied directly to the 20-Hz data (12 to 19% noise decrease); secondly, we show that by recomputing a regional SSB model (based on the 20-Hz estimations) even a simple parametric relation is sufficient to further improve the correction (further 15 to 19% noise decrease). We test our methodology using range, wave height and wind speed estimated with two retrackers applied to Jason-1 waveform data: the MLE4 retracked-data available in the Sensor Geophysical Data Records of the mission and the ALES retracked-data available in the OpenADB repository ( https://openadb.dgfi.tum.de/ ). The regional SSB models are computed parametrically by means of a crossover analysis in the Mediterranean Sea and North Sea. Correcting the high-rate data for the SSB reduces the correlation between retracked parameters. Regional variations in the proposed models might be due to differences in wave climate and remaining sea-state dependent residual errors. The variations in the empirical model with respect to the retracker used recall the need for a specific SSB correction for any retracker. This study, while providing a significantly more precise solution to exploit high-rate sea level data, calls for a re-thinking of the SSB correction in both its physical and numerical component, gives robustness to previous theories and provides an immediate improvement for the application of satellite altimetry in the regions of study.

中文翻译：

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通过高频和区域海况偏差校正提高卫星测高海平面数据的精度

摘要 海况偏差（SSB）是卫星测高估算海平面的一个很大的不确定性来源。目前还不清楚它在多大程度上依赖于参数估计（数值来源）或波动物理学（物理来源）中的误差。通过改进此校正的应用，我们计算了 20-Hz 海平面异常，其精度比当前标准高约 30%（即噪声更小）。改进有两个方面：首先我们证明 SSB 校正应该直接应用于 20-Hz 数据（噪声降低 12% 到 19%）；其次，我们表明，通过重新计算区域 SSB 模型（基于 20-Hz 估计），即使是简单的参数关系也足以进一步改进校正（进一步降低 15% 到 19% 的噪声）。我们使用范围测试我们的方法，使用两个应用于 Jason-1 波形数据的重新跟踪器估计的波高和风速：任务的传感器地球物理数据记录中提供的 MLE4 重新跟踪数据和 OpenADB 存储库中提供的 ALES 重新跟踪数据 (https://openadb. dgfi.tum.de/）。区域 SSB 模型是通过地中海和北海的交叉分析以参数方式计算的。校正 SSB 的高速率数据会降低重新跟踪参数之间的相关性。拟议模型的区域差异可能是由于波浪气候和剩余海况相关残差的差异。经验模型中使用的重新跟踪器的变化让人想起对任何重新跟踪器进行特定 SSB 校正的需要。这项研究，