A COMPARISON OF COINCIDENTAL TIME-SERIES OF THE OCEAN SURFACE HEIGHT BY SATELLITE ALTIMETER, MOORING, AND INVERTED ECHO SOUNDER

Altimetric measurements of sea surface height at two locations in the western tropical Pacific Ocean are compared to estimates of the dynami c sea surface height computed from cotemporal surface-to-bottom temper ature/salinity measurements on moorings and acoustic travel time measu red by bottom-moored inverted echo sounders. The results show statisti cally high correlation between the in situ measurements at periods gre ater than 5 days and between the altimeter and in situ measurements at periods greater than 20 days. The rms difference between any two mode s of observation is consistently between 2 and 3 cm.