Seven years of SMOS Sea Surface Salinity in the Arctic Ocean

• Main Authors: Olmedo, Estrella, Gabarró, Carolina, Ballabrera-Poy, Joaquim, González Gambau, Verónica, Martínez, Justino, Turiel, Antonio, Portabella, Marcos
• Format: Still Image
• Language: unknown
• Published: European Geosciences Union 2018
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Bering Strait; Davis Strait; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/185282

European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2018, 8-13 April 2018, Vienna, Austria.-- 1 page In the recent years, the Arctic Ocean has been under significant transformation as shown by numerous in situ andremote sensing measurements. The temperature of the upper layer of the Arctic Ocean has been increasing andmore solar heat has been absorbed by the increasing ice-free areas. Latest observational and modeling studieshave documented changes in the upper Arctic Ocean hydrography. In particular, an increase of liquid freshwatercontent over both the Canadian Basin and the central Arctic Ocean has been observed.An increased Bering Strait freshwater import to the Arctic Ocean, a decreased Davis Strait export, and theenhanced net sea ice melt could have played an important role in the observed freshwater trend. Besides, rivers areimportant sources of freshwater and heat to the Arctic Ocean and changes in the river runoff or temperature couldhave a strong impact on the Arctic system.Unfortunately, the number of surface salinity measurements is very scarce at high latitudes, and speciallyinside the Arctic Ocean. In such context, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission can providean unprecedented source of salinity information over the Arctic Ocean. In this work we have generated 7 yearsof SMOS sea surface salinity (SSS) in ice-free areas of the Arctic Ocean using a recently developed retrievalmethodology [1]. This methodology consists in computing debiased SSS anomaly fields and adding an annualSSS reference.An assessment of the 7 years of SMOS SSS maps have been performed by using different in situ data.Two different results raise: (i) at moderated high latitudes (out from the Arctic ocean) SMOS SSS provides anRMSE of 0.5 practical salinity units (psu), and it is in general in better agreement with independent Thermos-alinograph (TSG) data than other source of SSS data in this region (models and reanalysis); (ii) however, insome regions of the Arctic ocean differences with in situ become larger. ...