Analysis of coastal altimetry in the Mexican Caribbean

A reprocessing of sea-level anomalies (SLA) resulting from X-TRACK coastal altimetry was carried out for the ENVISAT (2002–2010) and TOPEX/POSEIDON-Jason (1992–2019) satellite missions in the coastal area of the Mexican Caribbean. This consisted of applying a tidal correction to coastal altimetry sea level observations. Harmonic analysis of five coastal tide gauge records was performed to estimate the most important tidal components of the area, resulting on M2, N2, O1, S2, K1, MF, and MM. The tidal signal was reconstructed with the seven tidal components using the TPXO9 model. The SLA signals corrected with the seven tidal components were validated with in situ data from coastal tide gauges. The validation showed that the TPXO9 tidal barotropic model (1/30° grid) used to reconstruct the tidal signal with the seven representative tidal components performed better than the FES2012 global model (1/16° grid) that uses 33 tidal components. The reprocessed SLAs showed clear seasonality with significant signals at 4, 6, and 12 months, with the annual signal being the dominant one. In the Mexican Caribbean coastal zone, oceanographic processes with different scales (from coastal to mesoscale) converge, showing their complexity in the different SLA signals observed. The aim of this work is to contribute to the analysis of coastal altimetry data and understanding the sea level variations in the Mexican Caribbean. This work is the first step in the implementation of methodologies that take advantage of coastal satellite altimetry in the Caribbean Sea.