Validation and Use of Operational Coastal Satellite Altimetry Observations for Storm Surges
Hoeyer, Jacob1; Madsen, Kristine1; Cipollini, Paolo2; West, Luke2
1Danish Meteorological Institute, DENMARK; 2NOC Southampton, UNITED KINGDOM

The combination satellite and tide gauge observations in a statistical model is useful for assessing storm surges in coastal areas (Madsen, Hoeyer and Tscherning, GRL, 2007). However, standard along-track altimetry products have limited quality closer than approximately 50 km from the coast, and are not available within approximately 10 km of the coast. Within the ESA DUE project eSurge, Envisat data from the coastal zone has now been processed, and here we validate the coastal altimetry observations for selected tracks in the North Sea/Baltic Sea and investigate how the observations improve the statistical modeling of coastal zone sea level.
The near-real time sea surface height information determined by our revised statistical model will be made operational within the Esurge project, in preparation of data assimilation into the DMI hydrodynamic model for the North Sea – Baltic Sea area.