Aquarius Satellite 7-Day Sea Surface Salinity Gridded Maps

Global sea surface salinity data is provided as gridded 1-degree spatial resolution maps averaged over 7-day periods. This version 5.0 product represents the official end-of-mission public release from the NASA and CONAE AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite mission. The dataset was last updated in June 2015.

Use Cases

• Analyzing 7-day averaged sea surface salinity patterns using the 1-degree gridded data to study ocean freshwater fluxes.
• Validating ocean circulation models by comparing simulated salinity fields against the satellite-derived brightness temperature and backscatter-corrected observations.
• Investigating the relationship between sea surface salinity and climate indices using the time-series of Ascending pass-only retrievals.
• Assessing surface roughness corrections in salinity retrieval algorithms using the collocated 1.26 GHz scatterometer backscatter data.

Strengths

• Official end-of-mission public release (version 5.0) ensuring final data quality.
• Data derived from three radiometers at 29, 38, and 46-degree incidence angles providing multiple measurement perspectives.
• Total cross-track swath of 370 km from the radiometers offers broad spatial coverage per pass.

Limitations

• Data recency is limited, with last update in 2015, missing recent ocean conditions.
• Product uses only Ascending satellite passes, potentially missing diurnal or pass-direction specific signals.
• Spatial resolution is 1 degree, which may be coarse for studying fine-scale oceanographic features.

Provenance

Source

NASA and Argentinian Space Agency (CONAE) AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via three L-band radiometers at 1.413 GHz and a 1.26 GHz scatterometer for corrections.

Freshness

Final version released in 2015; no ongoing updates expected.

Geography

Global ocean coverage.