Background
The Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) 2020 assessment found that agencies would benefit from the addition of a data flag in Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) sea surface salinity (SSS) products that would identify mixed ocean/sea ice conditions close to the sea ice edge. The previous approach called for masking and removing the salinity value whenever sea ice was detected.
NASA supports the production of SSS products from the SMAP satellite mission that are produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) as part of the NASA Ocean Salinity science team effort. The products, referred to as RSS SMAP-SSS, are distributed via the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC).
Status: Available Now
These data products, maintained by PO.DAAC, are available for download and use. The version 5.0 and 6.0 SMAP SSS datasets include flags that allow users to identify the sea-ice fraction in each pixel and access salinity values close to the sea ice edge.
Solution Characteristics
| Products | Sea Surface Salinity: V6 | Sea Surface Salinity Near Real-Time (NRT): V5, V6 | Sea Surface Salinity 8-day Running Mean: V5, V5.3, V6 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) | SMAP | SMAP |
| Instrument | L-band Radiometer | L-band Radiometer | L-band Radiometer |
| Processing Level | 2C | 2C | 3 |
| Temporal Coverage | April 2015 to present | July 2022 to present | March 2015 to present |
| Temporal Frequency | Hourly to less than daily | Hourly to less than daily | Weekly to less than monthly |
| Latency | 4 days | 5 hours | 7 days |
| Spatial Coverage | Global | Global | Global |
| Spatial Resolution | 70 km default (40 km available) | 70 km 0.25 x 0.25 degree grid | 70 km default (40 km available) 0.25 x 0.25 degree grid |
| Data Format | NetCDF4 | NetCDF4 | NetCDF4 |
Societal Impact
Sea surface salinity products with a sea ice mask allow operational users (e.g., NOAA) to improve their ocean forecasting systems.
Solution Resources
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