Aquarius Level 3: Seasonal Sea Surface Salinity Climatology from Satellite

Seasonal climatology data for sea surface salinity, mapped at a 1-degree spatial resolution. This version 5.0 dataset is the official end-of-mission public release from the NASA and CONAE AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite mission, using only ascending pass retrievals. The Aquarius instrument measured brightness temperature at 1.413 GHz and used a 1.26 GHz scatterometer for surface roughness corrections.

Use Cases

• Modeling seasonal ocean salinity patterns based on the 1-degree gridded climatology data.
• Analyzing long-term sea surface salinity trends based on the satellite-derived seasonal averages.
• Correcting salinity estimates for surface roughness using the scatterometer backscatter data mentioned in the description.
• Studying spatial salinity distribution across a 370 km satellite swath based on the instrument footprint details.

Strengths

• Official end-of-mission public data release (version 5.0) from a collaborative NASA and CONAE satellite mission.
• Data is gridded at a consistent 1-degree spatial resolution.
• Salinity retrieval incorporates corrections from a dedicated scatterometer operating at 1.26 GHz.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission's three-beam radiometer and scatterometer.

Time Range

Seasonal climatology (long-term average).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 14:48:56.391200; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage within the instrument's 370 km cross-track swath.