ECCO V4r4: Daily Sea-Ice Salt Plume Fluxes on LLC90 Grid, 1992-2017

1992-01-01 to 2018-01-01 daily-averaged sea-ice salt plume fluxes on the native LLC90 grid from the ECCO Version 4 Release 4 ocean and sea-ice state estimate. The data is a dynamically consistent reconstruction produced by NASA, fitting a 1-degree global MITgcm model to multiple observational constraints including satellite altimetry, sea surface temperature, salinity, and in-situ measurements. Observational constraints include data from satellites like ERS-1/2, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason series, and CryoSat-2, as well as programs like Argo and GO-SHIP.

Use Cases

• Modeling polar ocean convection and deep water formation based on daily salt plume fluxes.
• Analyzing long-term trends in sea-ice brine rejection and its impact on ocean salinity based on the 26-year time series.
• Validating or improving sea-ice parameterizations in climate models using the observationally constrained state estimate.
• Studying the coupling between sea-ice processes and three-dimensional ocean circulation based on the dynamically consistent reconstruction.

Strengths

• Covers a 26-year time period from 1992 to 2018.
• Integrates multiple observational data streams including satellite altimetry, sea surface temperature, salinity, and in-situ profiles.
• Provides data on a native high-resolution model grid (LLC90) for direct use in oceanographic studies.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect temporal bias inherent to the availability of satellite observations within the 1992-2017 period.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Collection Method

Dynamically and kinematically consistent reconstruction (state estimate) from the MIT general circulation model (MITgcm) fit to observations in a least-squares sense.

Time Range

1992-01-01T12:00:00 to 2018-01-01T00:00:00.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 02:54:08.315486; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean.