There are three main steps in the Level-2 processing chain:

1. Compute time-derived geophysical/environmental parameters.
2. Perform re-tracking and compute physical parameters.
3. Compute Level-2 altimeter/radiometer geophysical processing.

Computing time-derived geophysical parameters involves:

* re-computing altitude, orbital altitude rate, location and Doppler correction, accounting for updated orbit data
* computing ionospheric corrections
*computing non-equilibrium and equilibrium ocean tide heights, tidal loading, solid earth tide height, equilibrium long period ocean tide height and pole tide height (using pole locations)
*computing the height of the mean sea surface above the reference ellipsoid
*computing the mean dynamic topography, the height of the geoid and the ocean depth/land elevation.

Performing retracking and computing physical parameters (both SAR and LRM modes) involves:

*discriminating echoes (ocean/lead, sea-ice, ice sheet margin or ocean/coastal)
*performing retracking (ocean/lead, sea-ice, ice sheet margin or ocean/coastal)
*computing physical parameters
*merging snow depth (ocean/lead and sea-ice only)
*performing a short-arc, along track ocean interpolation (ocean/lead and sea-ice only)
*estimating freeboards (ocean/lead and sea-ice only)
*performing a latitude limit check (ocean/lead and sea-ice only)

(For SAR mode) performing modified slope correction (ice sheet margin and ocean/coastal only).
Level-2 altimeter/radiometer geophysical processing involves:

*inputting and checking Level-1 MWR products
*computing and correcting physical parameters according to platform data
*interpolating MWR data and computing MWR geophysical parameters
*computing altimeter wind speed and rain/ice flags
*computing wind, tropospheric corrections and inverted barometer according to meteorological data
*computing HF fluctuations of the atmospheric effect on the surface (dynamic atmosphere correction)
*computing sea state bias
*computing dual frequency ionospheric corrections
*building and checking Level-2 SRAL/MWR products.