In the next decade a wealth of ocean surface data will become available through the launch of satellites such as ERS 1. We discuss the problem of how to make optimal use of this data. We have investigated the benefits of having a coupled wind-wave analysis over the oceans for quality assessment of satellite data, for monitoring the performance of the algorithms (e.g., for the scatterometer), and for producing consistent wind and wave analyses. Using a reliable wave predition scheme, the WAM model, we show how to cross validate altimeter wave height with scatterometer data and how to construct an analyzed wave model spectrum from the altimeter wave height. The analyzed wave spectrum may be cross validated with the synthetic aperture radar image spectrum. Implications for improvement of, for example, the Seasat scatterometer algorithm are pointed out. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1989