Arctic and North Atlantic Sea Surface Salinity retrieval

• Main Authors: Martínez, Justino, Olmedo, Estrella, Gabarró, Carolina, González Gambau, Verónica, Turiel, Antonio, González-Haro, Cristina, Sabia, Roberto
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: European Space Agency 2019
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Greenland; Hudson; Hudson Bay; North Pole; Greenland Sea; Labrador Sea; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/205475

Atlantic form Space Workshop, 23-25 January 2019, Southampton, UK.-- 1 page The sparse number of in-situ measurements of Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) in the Arctic Ocean renders remote sensing platforms an invaluable tool to retrieve such variable. Recently, the Barcelona Expert Center (BEC) has deployed their version 2 of SSS Arctic data retrieved from Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission (SMOS). The new salinity maps cover the 2011-2017 period in time and from 50°N to the North Pole in space, with a space-time resolution of 25 km and 9 days [1]. This spatial coverage includes zones of the North Atlantic Ocean of special interest. It is worth noting, the Hudson Bay, whose drainage basin collects most of the Canadian fresh water; the Greenland Sea and the Labrador Sea, of great climatological interest since they receive directly the freshwater supplied by melting processes; and the North Sea, that accounts important international, commercial fisheries and currently contains the highest number of offshore oil rigs in the world.The Arctic and North Atlantic regions are challenging zones to retrieve SSS from remote sensing measures, mainly due to the low sensitivity of SSS to the L-band Brightness Temperatures (TB) measured by satellites when sea surface temperature is too low. Even worse, the eastern partof North Atlantic is highly contaminated by Radio Frequency Interferences (RFI) emitted in L-band as result of human activity