Aquarius: Annual Ancillary Sea Surface Temperature Maps

Version 5.0 of the Aquarius mission's Level 3 ancillary sea surface temperature data provides annual, ascending-orbit maps at a 1-degree spatial resolution. The data are derived from daily Reynolds NCDC SST fields, processed and gridded to match the Aquarius salinity and wind speed products for calibration purposes. This dataset represents the official end-of-mission public release from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite.

Use Cases

• Calibrating satellite-derived ocean salinity measurements based on ancillary SST data.
• Analyzing long-term annual sea surface temperature patterns at a global 1-degree scale.
• Validating oceanographic models using gridded, satellite-consistent SST data products.
• Studying the relationship between sea surface temperature and other Aquarius-measured variables like wind speed.

Strengths

• Represents the official end-of-mission public data release (version 5.0) from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.
• Provides data at multiple temporal resolutions (daily, 7-day, monthly, annual) and consistent 1-degree spatial resolution.
• Sourced from a recognized standard dataset (Reynolds NCDC 0.25-degree SST).

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low: specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not provided on any platform.
• A conflict exists in freshness: one platform shows a last updated date of 2026-03-13, while another shows 2015-06-07, suggesting potential metadata errors.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without further details.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), derived from Reynolds National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) SST data.

Collection Method

Daily SSTs from the source dataset were gridded and averaged using the Aquarius L2-L3 processing scheme.

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:32:16.982109 (datagov), but conflicting with 2015-06-07 (nasa_earthdata).

Geography

Global, gridded to 1-degree spatial resolution.