Aquarius Satellite Sea Surface Salinity Monthly Climatology

Aquarius Level 3 sea surface salinity data provides a gridded, 1-degree spatial resolution monthly climatology product derived from ascending satellite passes. This version 5.0 dataset represents the official end-of-mission public release from the NASA/CONAE AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite mission, which operated three radiometers and a scatterometer for salinity retrieval. The data is available across multiple government platforms, indicating its established role in climate and ocean science.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term average sea surface salinity patterns for climate model validation using the gridded 1-degree data.
• Studying ocean freshwater fluxes by examining the monthly climatology derived from satellite radiometer and scatterometer measurements.
• Mapping global salinity distributions for oceanographic research using the standard mapped image format from ascending passes.

Strengths

• Represents the official version 5.0 end-of-mission public data release from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission, ensuring a final, processed state.
• Data is derived from a sophisticated instrument suite including three radiometers at 29, 38, and 46-degree incidence angles and a 1.26 GHz scatterometer for surface roughness correction.
• Provides a consistent monthly climatology product, useful for analyzing seasonal and long-term salinity patterns beyond single observations.

Limitations

• Key technical specifications like row count, file size, and exact column structure are unknown across all provided sources.
• Sources conflict on license information, with one platform listing 'other-license-specified' and others listing 'None' or 'unknown'.
• The dataset's last update date is inconsistent, with one source showing a future date (2026-03-13) while others show 2015-06-07, raising provenance questions.

Provenance

Source

NASA and the Argentinian Space Agency Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) via the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing using three push-broom radiometers measuring brightness temperature at 1.413 GHz and a scatterometer measuring ocean backscatter at 1.26 GHz.

Time Range

Monthly climatology (long-term average).

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:18:24.142810

Geography

Global ocean coverage with a 370 km cross-track swath.