| Summary: | European Space Agency (ESA) Living Planet Symposium, 9-13 September 2013, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.-- 6 pages, 5 figures Temperature-Salinity (T-S) diagrams are derived from SMOS and Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) and OSTIA Sea Surface Temperature (SST) in order to characterize the (co-)variability of SST and SSS in four regions of the North Atlantic. Comparison with in-situ data from Argo floats is used to assess the new information that the satellite data provide with respect to Argo and gain further insights into the processes that govern the near-surface stratification. The surface T-S signatures as seen by the satellites and Argo show similar patterns, with SMOS detecting fresher SSS values, as expected, and OSTIA showing a tendency to be warmer than Argo. Part of this fresher misfit can be attributed to precipitation, whilst the effect of other parameters are being assessed. On-going efforts are devoted to link these signatures with the water masses formation Peer reviewed
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