ANGEO Annales Geophysicae ANGEO Ann. Geophys. 1432-0576 Springer Verlag Göttingen, Germany 10.1007/s00585-997-1478-z Non-tidal aliasing in seasonal sea-level variability and annual Rossby waves as observed by satellite altimetry Chen G. 3 1 Ezraty R. 3 2 Ocean Remote Sensing Institute, Ocean University of Gingdas, 5 Yushau Road, Gingdas 266003, China Département d'Océanographie Spatiale, Centre de Brest, IFREMER, B.P. 70, F-29280 Plouzané , France Tel: +3 02 98 22 42 99; Fax: +3 02 98 22 45 33; e-mail: rezraty@ifremer.fr 30 11 1997 15 11 1478 1488 Copyright: © 1997 G. Chen 1997 © European Geosciences Union 1997 This article is available from https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/15/1478/1997/angeo-15-1478-1997.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/15/1478/1997/angeo-15-1478-1997.pdf

It is becoming well known that aliasing associated with ocean tides could be a major source of systematic error in altimeter sea-level measurements, due to asynoptic sampling and imperfect tide modelling. However, it has been shown that signals of non-tidal origin may also contribute significantly to the observed aliasing. In this paper, numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the full aliasing potential associated with altimeter observations of seasonal sea-level variability and annual Rossby waves. Our results indicate that ignorance of non-tidal aliasing may lead to the possibility of underestimating the total aliasing and misinterpreting or overlooking existing geophysical phenomena. Therefore, it is argued that an entire aliasing picture should be kept in mind when satellite altimeter data are analysed.