Evaluation and intercomparison of SMOS, aquarius, and SMAP sea surface salinity products in the arctic ocean

19 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables Salinity is a critical parameter in the Arctic Ocean, having potential implications for climate and weather. This study presents the first systematic analysis of 6 commonly used sea surface salinity (SSS) products from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote Sensing
Main Authors: Fournier, Séverine, Lee, Tong, Tang, Wenqing, Steele, Michael, Olmedo, Estrella
Other Authors: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (US), Office of Naval Research (US), National Science Foundation (US)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2019
Subjects:
Sea surface salinity
Arctic
SMAP
Aquarius
SMOS
Arctic Ocean
Steele
Sea ice
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/197195
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11243043
https://doi.org/10.13039/100000001
https://doi.org/10.13039/100000006
https://doi.org/10.13039/100000104
Description
Summary:19 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables Salinity is a critical parameter in the Arctic Ocean, having potential implications for climate and weather. This study presents the first systematic analysis of 6 commonly used sea surface salinity (SSS) products from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aquarius and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellites and the European Space Agency (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, in terms of their consistency among one another and with in-situ data. Overall, the satellite SSS products provide a similar characterization of the time mean SSS large-scale patterns and are relatively consistent in depicting the regions with strong SSS temporal variability. When averaged over the Arctic Ocean, the SSS show an excellent consistency in describing the seasonal and interannual variations. Comparison of satellite SSS with in-situ salinity measurements along ship transects suggest that satellite SSS captures salinity gradients away from regions with significant sea-ice concentration. The root-mean square differences (RMSD) of satellite SSS with respect to in-situ measurements improves with increasing temperature, reflecting the limitation of L-band radiometric sensitivity to SSS in cold water. However, the satellite SSS biases with respect to the in-situ measurements do not show a consistent dependence on temperature. The results have significant implications for the calibration and validation of satellite SSS as well as for the modeling community and the design of future satellite missions This research was supported by a NASA grant. M. Steele was also supported by NASA grant 80NSSC18K0837, ONR grant N00014-17-1-2545, and NSF grant OPP-1751363 Peer reviewed

Similar Items