Aquarius Daily Descending Sea Surface Salinity Gridded Data

Aquarius Level 3 sea surface salinity data provides daily, gridded 1-degree spatial resolution measurements from the NASA/CONAE AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite mission. This version 5.0 dataset represents the official end-of-mission public release, containing descending pass observations only. The satellite used three radiometers and a scatterometer to measure brightness temperature and ocean backscatter for salinity estimation.

Use Cases

• Analyzing daily global sea surface salinity patterns using the 1-degree gridded data.
• Validating ocean circulation and freshwater flux models with satellite-derived salinity measurements.
• Studying the relationship between sea surface salinity and brightness temperature (TH, TV) or ocean backscatter from the scatterometer.
• Investigating seasonal and interannual salinity variability using the descending pass time series.

Strengths

• Represents the official, final data release (Version 5.0) from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.
• Provides global coverage with a consistent 1-degree spatial grid and daily temporal resolution.
• Data is derived from a sophisticated instrument suite measuring brightness temperature at 1.413 GHz and backscatter at 1.26 GHz.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unknown across all sources.
• Sources conflict on license information ('other-license-specified' vs. null).
• Data is limited to descending satellite passes only, which may introduce sampling bias.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing using three push-broom radiometers and a scatterometer.

Time Range

Coverage spans the operational lifetime of the Aquarius instrument, though specific start and end dates are not provided.

Freshness

Last updated metadata dates vary: 2015-06-07 on NASA Earthdata, 2026-03-13 on Data.gov (potentially a placeholder).

Geography

Global ocean coverage.