Sea Surface Salinity - Near Real Time - MIRAS SMOS

CoastWatch/OceanWatch produces 0.25-degree longitude/latitude Level-3 gridded sea-surface salinity (SSS) daily and 3-day mean datasets by box averaging European Space Agency (ESA) Soil Moisture – Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission’s Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) satellite observations over the global ocean.

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    Sea Surface Salinity - Near Real Time - MIRAS SMOS

    CoastWatch/OceanWatch produces 0.25-degree longitude/latitude Level-3 gridded sea-surface salinity (SSS) daily and 3-day mean datasets by box averaging European Space Agency (ESA) Soil Moisture – Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission’s Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) satellite observations over the global ocean.

    CoastWatch/OceanWatch Level-3 SSS products are generated directly from the ESA MIRAS SMOS Level-2 swath NetCDF files (currently V6.62; see release "https://earth.esa.int/documents/10174/1854503/SMOS-Level-2-Ocean-Salinity-v662-release-note"). There are two SSS variables in V6.62 L2 NetCDF files, SSS_corr (corrected for land-sea contamination) and SSS_uncorr. The CoastWatch L3 product ingests the SSS_corr  with values between 27 - 40 PSS. These products improve the application of satellite SSS products in NOAA by minimizing the data latency to within 24 hours of Level-2 data availability.

    Short Names
    CoastWatch/OceanWatch binned-SMOS-L3
    Temporal Start Date
    May 1, 2010
    Product Families
    Sea Surface Salinity
    Measurements
    Sea Surface Salinity
    Processing Levels
    Level 3
    Latency Groups
    0 Hours <= 24 Hours (NRT)
    Latency Details

    24 hours

    Spatial Resolution Groups
    2km+
    Spatial Resolution Details

    0.25°

    Data Providers
    NOAA
    NESDIS
    STAR
    CoastWatch
    Spatial Coverage

    Global

    Description

    180W - 180E
    90N - 90S

    SMOS

    Description

    The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity

    Platform Type
    Low Earth Orbit Satellite (LEO)
    Instruments
    Organizations
    ESA
    Orbital Altitude
    763 km
    Orbital Inclination
    98.42 degrees

    MIRAS

    Description

    Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis

    Platforms
    Instrument Types
    Imager
    Organizations
    ESA
    • V6.62 Release Notes from ESA (link is external)contains links to other SMOS SSS product documents (such as ATDB, product specs, etc.)♦
    • Barcelona Expert Center (2016). SMOS-BEC Ocean and Land Products Description. BEC-SMOS-0001-PD,Version 1.5. Technical report, BEC.
    • Reagan, J., T. Boyer, J. Antonov, and M. Zweng (2014), Comparison analysis between Aquarius sea surface salinity and World Ocean Database in situ analyzed sea surface salinity, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 119, 8122–8140, doi:10.1002/2014JC009961(link is external)♦.
    • SMOS-BEC Team 2016: SMOS-BEC Ocean and Land Products Description. BEC-SMOS-0001-PD.pdf , version 1.5
    • SMOS Team, 2014: SMOS L2 OS Input/output data definition. SO-TN-ARG-GS-009. Issue 2, Rev 25, 5 September, 2014. ARGANS 

    ** When you use our data, please reference the product citation (if available) and acknowledge "NOAA CoastWatch" **