Skip to Main content Skip to Navigation
Conference papers

Comparison of SMOS and Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity and analysis of possible causes for the differences

Emmanuel P. Dinnat 1 Jacqueline Boutin 2 Xiaobin Yin 3 David M. Le Vine 4 Philippe Waldteufel 5 Jean-Luc Vergely 6
1 GSFC Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory
2 IPSO - Interactions et Processus au sein de la couche de Surface Océanique
LOCEAN - Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques
3 LOCEAN - Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques
4 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
5 ESTER - LATMOS
LATMOS - Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales
6 ACRI-ST - Analytic and Computational Research, Inc. - Earth Sciences
Abstract : Two ongoing space missions share the scientific objective of mapping the global Sea Surface Salinity (SSS), yet their observations show significant discrepancies. ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and NASA's Aquarius use L-band (1.4 GHz) radiometers to measure emission from the sea surface and retrieve SSS. Significant differences in SSS retrieved by both sensors are observed, with SMOS SSS being generally lower than Aquarius SSS, except for very cold waters where SMOS SSS is the highest overall. Figure 1 is an example of the difference between the SSS retrieved by SMOS and Aquarius averaged over one month and 1 degree in longitude and latitude. Differences are mostly between -1 psu and +1 psu (psu, practical salinity unit), with a significant regional and latitudinal dependence. We investigate the impact of the vicarious calibration and some components of the retrieval algorithm used by both mission on these differences.
Document type :
Conference papers
Complete list of metadatas
https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-01139555
Contributor : Catherine Cardon <>
Submitted on : Monday, April 6, 2015 - 1:24:26 PM
Last modification on : Wednesday, January 13, 2021 - 11:12:05 AM

Identifiers

Collections

INSU | CNRS | UPMC | LOCEAN | UVSQ | LATMOS | SORBONNE-UNIVERSITE | MNHN | SU-SCIENCES

Citation

Emmanuel P. Dinnat, Jacqueline Boutin, Xiaobin Yin, David M. Le Vine, Philippe Waldteufel, et al.. Comparison of SMOS and Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity and analysis of possible causes for the differences. XXXIth URSI, General Assembly and Scientific Symposium (URSI GASS), Aug 2014, Beijing, China. 4 p., ⟨10.1109/URSIGASS.2014.6929701⟩. ⟨insu-01139555⟩

Export

BibTeX TEI DC DCterms EndNote

Share

Metrics

Record views

239