SMAP Satellite: Monthly Sea Surface Salinity Maps

NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite, launched on 31 January 2015, provides global sea surface salinity measurements despite a scatterometer malfunction in July 2015. The Version 5.3 evaluation dataset offers monthly, gridded salinity data from the mission's start through the end of 2023, processed with a surface roughness correction using WindSat wind speeds. Its standard product has a 70 km resolution, with a 40 km variable included for most open ocean applications.

Use Cases

• Monitoring large-scale ocean salinity patterns based on global, monthly gridded data.
• Studying the impact of freshwater fluxes on ocean circulation using a multi-year time series.
• Validating ocean models and other satellite salinity products against this evaluation dataset.
• Investigating surface roughness correction methods in passive microwave retrievals based on the use of WindSat data.

Strengths

• Provides a continuous global record from January 2015 through December 2023.
• Offers two spatial resolution products: a standard 70 km smoothed field and a 40 km variable.
• Achieves near-global coverage every 3 days due to SMAP's 1000 km swath.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low; specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not provided on any platform.
• The dataset is an evaluation product, not the final validated release (V6.0), indicating it is provisional.
• Relies on a workaround using WindSat data for wind speed due to the SMAP scatterometer malfunction.

Provenance

Source

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), sponsored by the NASA Ocean Salinity Science Team.

Collection Method

Derived from orbital/swath data from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite mission.

Time Range

January 2015 to December 2023

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:26:47.388886

Geography

Global