Aquarius Satellite Monthly Sea Surface Salinity Smoothed Gridded Data

Monthly gridded sea surface salinity data derived from NASA and CONAE's Aquarius/SAC-D satellite mission. The dataset provides global 1-degree resolution salinity maps, smoothed and averaged from ascending satellite passes, representing the official end-of-mission Version 5.0 release. It is produced from measurements by three radiometers and a scatterometer operating at L-band frequencies to estimate salinity.

Use Cases

• Analyzing global patterns of sea surface salinity for climate studies using the gridded salinity values.
• Investigating ocean circulation and freshwater fluxes by tracking monthly salinity changes across ocean basins.
• Validating and calibrating oceanographic models with satellite-derived salinity measurements.
• Studying the relationship between ocean salinity and brightness temperature (TH, TV) or backscatter data from the instrument's radiometers and scatterometer.

Strengths

• Represents the official, final Version 5.0 data release from the Aquarius/SAC-D mission, ensuring a processed and validated dataset.
• Provides global coverage with a consistent 1-degree spatial resolution gridded product, facilitating large-scale analysis.
• Derived from a sophisticated instrument suite including three radiometers and a scatterometer for surface roughness correction.

Limitations

• Contains only data from ascending satellite passes, omitting descending pass information which limits temporal sampling.
• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• Conflicting license information exists between platforms ('other-license-specified' on Data.gov vs. 'None' on NASA EarthData).

Provenance

Source

NASA and the Argentinian Space Agency (CONAE) via the Aquarius/SAC-D satellite mission.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing using L-band radiometers and a scatterometer, processed into Level 3 gridded standard mapped images.

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:19:29.872373

Geography

Global ocean coverage.