Improving SMOS Sea Surface Salinity in the Western Mediterranean Sea through Multivariate and Multifractal Analysis

• Published in: Remote Sensing
• Main Authors: Olmedo, Estrella, Taupier-Letage, I., Turiel, Antonio, Alvera-Azcárate, Aida
• Other Authors: European Commission, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), European Space Agency, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (España)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Molecular Diversity Preservation International 2018
• Subjects: Remote sensing; Sea surface salinity; Mediterranean Sea; SMOS; Quality assessment; Data processing; Alboran Sea; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/164555; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10030485; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000844; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000780; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003329; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033

Special issue Sea Surface Salinity Remote Sensing.-- 24 pages, 14 figures, 4 tables A new methodology using a combination of debiased non-Bayesian retrieval, DINEOF (Data Interpolating Empirical Orthogonal Functions) and multifractal fusion has been used to obtain Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) fields over the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The debiased non-Bayesian retrieval mitigates the systematic errors produced by the contamination of the land over the sea. In addition, this retrieval improves the coverage by means of multiyear statistical filtering criteria. This methodology allows obtaining SMOS SSS fields in the Mediterranean Sea. However, the resulting SSS suffers from a seasonal (and other time-dependent) bias. This time-dependent bias has been characterized by means of specific Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOFs). Finally, high resolution Sea Surface Temperature (OSTIA SST) maps have been used for improving the spatial and temporal resolution of the SMOS SSS maps. The presented methodology practically reduces the error of the SMOS SSS in the Mediterranean Sea by half. As a result, the SSS dynamics described by the new SMOS maps in the Algerian Basin and the Balearic Front agrees with the one described by in situ SSS, and the mesoscale structures described by SMOS in the Alboran Sea and in the Gulf of Lion coincide with the ones described by the high resolution remotely-sensed SST images (AVHRR) This work has been carried out within the project “SMOS sea surface salinity data in the Mediterranean Sea” ([50]), funded by the European Space Agency “Support to Science (STSE) PATHFINDERS” call. Part of this work was also supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Spain, through the National R+D Plan under L-Band Project ESP2017-89463-C3-1-R, PROMISES Project ESP2015-67549-C3 and previous grants. [.] This work is a contribution to the ANR ASICS-MED project (grant ANR-12-BS06-0003). The MIO laboratory acknowledges the support received ...