ESA’s Earth explorer mission CryoSat-2 has an ice-monitoring objective, but it has proven to also be a valuable source of observations for measuring impacts of climate change over oceans. In this paper, we report on our long-term ocean data analysis and validation and give our final words on CryoSat-2’s Geophysical Ocean Products (GOP) Baseline-C. The validation is based on a cross comparison with concurrent altimetry and with in situ tide gauges. The highlights of our findings include GOP Baseline-C showing issues with the ionosphere and pole tide correction. The latter gives rise to an east–west pattern in range bias. Between Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Low-Resolution Mode (LRM), a 1.4 cm jump in range bias is explained by a 0.5 cm jump in sea state bias, which relates to a significant wave height SAR-LRM jump of 10.5 cm. The remaining 0.9 cm is due to a range bias between ascending and descending passes, exhibiting a clear north–south pattern and ascribed to a timing bias of +0.367 ms, affecting both time-tag and elevation. The overall range bias of GOP Baseline-C is established at −2.9 cm, referenced to all calibrated concurrent altimeter missions. The bias drift does not exceed 0.2 mm/yr, leading to the conclusion that GOP Baseline-C is substantially stable and measures up to the altimeter reference missions. This is confirmed by tide gauge comparison with a selected set of 309 PSMSL tide gauges over 2010–2022: we determined a correlation of R = 0.82, a mean standard deviation of (Formula presented.) cm (common reference and GIA corrected), and a drift of 0.17 mm/yr. In conclusion, the quality, continuity, and reference of GOP Baseline-C is exceptionally good and stable over time, and no proof of any deterioration or platform aging has been found. Any improvements for the next CryoSat-2 Baselines could come from sea state bias optimization, ionosphere and pole tide correction improvement, and applying a calibrated value for any timing biases.

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Introduction: Breast implant-associated anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) is a rare form of non-Hodgkin T-cell lymphoma associated with breast reconstruction post-mastectomy or cosmetic-additive mammoplasty. The increasing use of implants for cosmetic purposes is expected to lead to an increase in BIA-ALCL cases. This study investigated the main characteristics of the disease and the factors predicting BIA-ALCL onset in patients with and without an implant replacement. Methods: A quantitative analysis was performed by two independent researchers on cases extracted from 52 primary studies (case report, case series, and systematic review) published until April 2022 and searched in PubMed, Scopus, and Google-Scholar databases using “Breast-Implant” AND/OR “Associated” AND/OR “Anaplastic-Large-Cell-Lymphoma”. The statistical significance was verified by Student’s t-test for continuous variables, while Fisher’s exact test was applied for qualitative variables. Cox model with time-dependent covariates was used to estimate BIA-ALCL’s onset time. The Kaplan–Meier model allowed the estimation of the probability of survival after therapy according to breast implant exposure time. Results: Overall, 232 patients with BIA-ALCL were extracted. The mean age at diagnosis was 55 years old, with a mean time to disease onset from the first implant of 10.3 years. The hazard of developing BIA-ALCL in a shorter time resulted significantly higher for patients not having an implant replacement (hazard ratio = 0.03; 95%CI: 0.005–0.19; p-value < 0.01). Patients with implant replacement were significantly older than patients without previous replacement at diagnosis, having a median time to diagnosis since the first implant of 13 years (7 years in patients without replacement); anyway, the median time to BIA-ALCL occurrence since the last implantation was equal to 5 years. Discussion: Our findings suggest that, in BIA-ALCL patients, the implant substitution and/or capsulectomy may delay the disease’s onset. However, the risk of reoccurrence in an earlier time should be considered in these patients. Moreover, the time to BIA-ALCL onset slightly increased with age. Selection bias, lack of awareness, misdiagnosis, and limited data availability could be identified as limits of our study. An implant replacement should be considered according to a risk stratification approach to delay the BIA-ALCL occurrence in asymptomatic patients, although a stricter follow-up after the implant substitution should be recommended. Systematic Review Registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO, identifier: CRD42023446726.

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ESA’s Earth Explorer CryoSat-2 precisely measures the changes in the thickness of marine ice floating on the polar oceans and variations in the thickness of the vast ice sheets that overlie Greenland and Antarctica. The data delivered by the CryoSat-2 mission completes the picture to determine and understand the ice role in the Earth system in general and climate change in particular. For this, the quality of the satellite orbit, the measurements of the altimeter, and all required corrections have to meet the highest performance; not only over the ice caps and sea-ice surface but also over the oceans. As Cryosat-2 ocean products continuously evolve they need to be quality controlled and thoroughly validated via science-oriented diagnostics based on multi-platform in situ data, models and other (altimeter) satellite missions. The rationale for this is based on the new CryoSat-2 scientific roadmap, which specifically addresses the key technical and scientific challenges related to the long-term monitoring of sea-level and ocean circulation changes in the context of Global Warming. This also involves opportunities for synergy with missions like ICESAT-2 and the upcoming Copernicus CRISTAL mission. In this context, the objective of our research is the long-term monitoring of the level-2 CryoSat-2 Geophysical Ocean Product (GOP), by evaluating the stability of the measurement system and identifying potential biases, trends and drifts over the ocean, through calibration and comparisons with concurrent ocean altimeter data, supported by the Radar Altimeter Database System (RADS). Independently, we also address this by comparing the GOP geophysical parameters with external models and in situ measurements such as the ones from selected sets of tide gauges. The very precise determination of the orbital height is part of the research activity but dealt with in a separate paper. For our activity we persistently monitor, analyze and identify systematic errors in the observations, estimated (trends in) biases in range, significant wave height, backscatter, wind speed and sea state bias, and timing biases. An important finding is that GOP CryoSat-2 Baseline C data seem to have a range bias of -2.82 cm and no apparent drift w.r.t. altimeter (Jason) reference missions (< 0.1 mm/yr). The comparison with tide gauges is based on monthly averaged sea level from the PSMSL archive, for which we conclude that GOP data has a correlation of better than 0.84 with a selected set of 185 PSMSL tide gauges, a mean standard deviation better than 5.8 cm, and an average drift of -0.19 mm/yr, which translates to an overall drift of +0.11 mm/yr when taking a global GIA correction of +0.3 mm/yr into account. We conclude that Cryosat-2 GOP represents a (long-term) stable measurement.@en