SOME NEW DEVELOPMENTS RELATED TO THE APPLICATIONS OF ALTIMETER.

Summary form only given, as follows. The satellite Altimeter is one of the most mature microwave remote sensing devices available to date. The development of the Altimeter started with Skylab, followed by GEOS-3 and Seasat. Other than the marine geoid, Altimeter signals have been used quite successfully in extracting wind speed, significant wave height, and geostrophic current at the ocean surface. Recently, there have been some new developments in theoretical analysis as well as hardware design that will make the Altimeter more powerful. On the theoretical side, results on the non-Gaussian joint probability density functions suggest a number of improvements in the geophysical parameter extracting algorithms. The new statistical models also make it possible to determine and remove the electromagnetic biases in the mean sea level and the significant wave height measurements. On the hardware design aspect, the multibeam Altimeter offers new possibilities of detailed ocean eddy mapping and sea state measurements. These and other results related to the applications of Altimeter are summarized.