A new animation showing sea surface salinity (SSS) and sea surface temperature (SST) data collected by the Saildrone unmanned surface vehicle (USV) is available at NASA’s Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC). The data were collected in a low-salinity, high precipitation region in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean between August 2016 and November 2017 as part of the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study-2 (SPURS-2) field campaign, which was a follow-on to the original SPURS project. SPURS, which is funded principally by NASA with support from other U.S. agencies and European partners, is a series of science process studies and associated oceanographic field campaigns exploring the mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. (Note that there is no audio with the animation.)
The two graphs in the animation show comparisons between Saildrone-collected SSS and SST data with SSS data from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive ( SMAP) satellite (upper graph) and SST data from the Multi-scale Ultra-high Resolution ( MUR) Analysis dataset (lower graph). The animation highlights the good agreement between data collected by Saildrone and satellite-derived SMAP and MUR data.
Explore the data at NASA’s PO.DAAC:
SPURS-2 field campaign: doi: 10.5067/SPUR2-SDRON
SMAP SSS: doi: 10.5067/SMP40-3SPCS
MUR SST: doi:10.5067/GHGMR-4FJ04
