Satellite altimeters routinely supply sea surface height (SSH) measurements which are key observations to monitor ocean dynamics. However, below a wavelength of about 70 km, along-track altimeter measurements are often characterized by a dramatic drop in the signal-to-noise ratio, making it very challenging to fully exploit available altimeter observations to precisely analyze small mesoscale variations in SSH. Although various approaches have been proposed and applied to identify and filter noise from measurements, no distinctive methodology emerged to be systematically applied in operational products. To best cope with this unresolved issue, the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) actually provides simple band-pass filtered data to mitigate noise contamination in the along-track SSH signals and more innovative and adapted noise filtering methods are thus left to users seeking to unveil small-scale altimeter signals. Here demonstrated, a fully data-driven approach is developed and applied to provide robust estimates of noise-free Sea Level Anomaly (SLA) signals. The method combines Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), to help analyze non-stationary and non-linear processes, and an adaptive noise filtering technique inspired by Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) decompositions. It is now found to best resolve the distribution of the sea surface height variability in the mesoscale 30-120 km wavelength band. A practical uncertainty variable is attached to the denoised SLA estimates that accounts for errors related to the local signal to noise ratio, but also for uncertainties in the denoising process, which assumes that SLA variability results in part from a stochastic process. Here, measurements from the Jason-3, Sentinel-3 A and SARAL/AltiKa altimeters are processed and analyzed, and their energy spectral and seasonal distributions characterized in the small mesoscale domain. Anticipating data from the upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, these denoised SLA measurements for three reference altimeter missions already yield valuable opportunities to assess global small mesoscale kinetic energy distributions.

This dataset was developed within the Ocean Surface Topography Science Team (OSTST) activities. A grant was awarded to the SASSA (Satellite Altimeter Short-scale Signals Analysis) project by the TOSCA board in the framework of the CNES/EUMETSAT call CNES-DSP/OT 12-2118. Altimeter data were provided by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) and by the Sea State Climate Change Initiative (CCI) project.