Abstract:    As one of the most important physical parameters of the ocean, sea surface height plays an important role in the prevention of tsunami and storm surge, and is one of the important research content of marine science and remote sensing surveying field. Roughness as an important factor affecting the sea surface altimetry, is mainly caused by the change of wind speed. In order to explore effects of roughness changes caused by wind speed on the accuracy of the height altimetry, two experiments were performed, the lake experiment and the sea experiment, respectively. Through the research of the wind speed and the reflection signal phase RMS relation, qualitative analysis of the influence of surface roughness on the accuracy of the height altimetry was performed. We find that the error of the sea surface altimetry RMS is nearly doubled when the skewing RMS is increased by 0.005 rad.