Geomagnetic storm affected the quality of the Sea Level Anomaly product

The recent geomagnetic storms (May 11, 2024) caused temporary degradation of the near real-time sea surface height products. (The wave height and wind speed products had little if any impacts).  This includes the gridded daily sea level anomaly product.  Because the product can contain up to 14 days of data inputs in the optimal interpolation process,  the current product may include anomalous satellite passes that were not removed during Quality Control tests.  

Jason-3 and Sentinel-6 are in higher orbits and were less affected. The near-real time orbits for the lower missions (Sentinel-3, SARAL, CryoSat-2, SWOT-Nadir) had large errors on May 11, 2024. CryoSat-2 is the only single-band altimeter and therefore depends on a modeled ionosphere path delay. It showed increased errors for several days.