Sea surface salinity: Inter-comparison of satellite products, in situ measurements, and impact of differences in retrieval algorithm

Emmanuel P. Dinnat (1) , David M. Le Vine (2) , Jacqueline Boutin (3) , Thomas Meissner (4)

1 Chapman University
2 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
3 IPSO - Interactions et Processus au sein de la couche de Surface Océanique
4 RSS - Remote Sensing Systems [Santa Rosa]

We present comparisons between satellite sea surface salinity products from the SMOS, Aquarius and SMAP missions and assess some of the reasons for the observed differences. To do so, we reprocess Aquarius retrievals using the dielectric constant model and ancillary sea surface temperature product used for SMOS. We quantify their impact on the differences between SMOS and Aquarius, and validate the various Aquarius algorithms using in situ salinity measurements. Among the significant difference in retrieved sea surface salinity are the dependence to sea surface temperature and coastal biases. New approaches to for land contamination correction will be presented.

Domaines: Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]

Emmanuel P. Dinnat, David M. Le Vine, Jacqueline Boutin, Thomas Meissner. Sea surface salinity: Inter-comparison of satellite products, in situ measurements, and impact of differences in retrieval algorithm. 2017 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Jul 2017, Fort Worth, United States. ⟨10.1109/IGARSS.2017.8127615⟩. ⟨hal-01836447⟩