Background

NASA supports production of a sea surface salinity (SSS) product from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) platform, produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) as part of the NASA Ocean Salinity Science Team effort. The product, referred to as RSS SMAP-SSS, is distributed via NASA's Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC). NOAA requests an additional flag to be included in the RSS SMAP-SSS product to get closer to the sea ice edge, rather than the current approach of masking and removing the SSS value whenever sea ice is detected. 

Status

PO.DAAC released Version 5.0 RSS SMAP Sea Surface Salinity data in late 2022. NASA continues to produce salinity values from SMAP close to the sea ice edge and now includes a variable/flag that sates the fraction of sea ice pixels within SMAP satellite footprints. This enables the end user to select the SSS value based on the sea ice fractions in the measurement. 

Solution Characteristics

Societal Impact

Sea surface salinity product with sea ice mask allows operational users (e.g., NOAA) to improve their ocean forecasting systems to support efforts for advancing the blue economy.

Solution Resources

Need help using this solution? For more information, visit the following resources:

• RSS SMAP Sea Surface Salinity Data
• Addressing Needs for Sea Surface Salinity Data