The wet tropospheric path delay for the SEASAT altimeter height measurements is on the order of 10-50 cm. The model for the tropospheric range correction must be accurate to 5 cm or better to achieve an overall 10 cm accuracy for the SEASAT altimeter height measurements. The wet tropospheric range correction is calculated either by using Fleet Numerical Oceanographic Center (FNOC) global interpolations of surface-level atmospheric pressure, temperature, and water vapor pressure or by using SEASAT Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) antenna temperature measurements at the 18, 21, and 37 GHz frequencies. The SMMR wet tropospheric correction algorithm is expressed as a linear function of the corresponding brightness temperatures. The algorithm is optimized by adjusting two scaling parameters to minimize the differences between the SMMR and radiosonde determined range corrections. The differences between the radiometer and radiosonde corrections have a standard deviation of 2.79 cm, while the standard deviation for the correction based on the FNOC global interpolation is 5.73 cm.
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