Some higher crossover differences are influenced by sea level variability caused by strong meandering and variable currents, like the Circumpolar Current, Kuroshio, and Gulf Stream. Dots indicate the number of crossovers per bin. This might be due to a remaining local degradation of the radial orbit error, but meandering of currents, and the resulting sea level variability, should not be excluded as a cause. In coastal regions, imperfection in the modelling of tides contribute to a regional increase of the crossover height differences. Low values like in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, where no sizable currents are present, are most indicative of the real radial orbit errors.
Dots indicate the number of crossovers per bin.
Figure 8 portrays the distribution of the crossover RMS as a function of the time laps between the ascending and descending passes forming the crossover. The crossover RMS , however, shows a significant increase during the first ten days, and then stabilises. All these have decorrelation periods of some 2 to 10 days, and thus contribute to the crossover height differences only at longer time intervals.