Validating SMAP SSS with in situ measurements

Tang, Wenqing; Fore, Alexander; Yueh, Simon; Lee, Tong; Hayashi, Akiko; Sanchez-Franks, Alejandra ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4831-5461; Martinez, Justino; King, Brian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1338-3234; Baranowski, Dariusz. 2017 Validating SMAP SSS with in situ measurements. Remote Sensing of Environment, 200. 326-340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.08.021

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© 20xx Elsevier B.V. This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Remote Sensing of Environment. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was/will be published in Remote Sensing of Environment doi:10.1016/j.rse.2017.08.021
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.08.021

Abstract/Summary

Sea surface salinity (SSS) retrieved from SMAP radiometer measurements are validated against in situ salinity from Argo floats, tropical moored buoys and ship-based thermosalinograph (TSG) data. SMAP SSS achieved an accuracy of 0.2 PSU on a monthly basis in comparison with Argo gridded data in the tropics and mid-latitudes. In the tropical oceans, time series comparison of salinity measured at 1 m by moored buoys indicates that SMAP can track large salinity changes occurred within a month. Synergetic analysis of SMAP, SMOS and Argo data allows us to identify and exclude erroneous jumps or drift in some real-time buoy data from the assessment of the satellite data. The resulting SMAP-buoy matchup analysis gives an average standard deviation of 0.22 PSU and correlation coefficient of 0.73 on weekly scale. On monthly time scales, the average standard deviation reduced to 0.17 PSU and the correlation coefficient improved to 0.8. SMAP L3 daily maps reveals salty water intrusions from the Arabian Sea into the Bay of Bengal during the Indian summer monsoon, consistent with the daily measurements collected from Argo floats deployed during the Bay of Bengal Boundary Layer Experiment (BoBBLE) project field campaign. In the Mediterranean Sea, the spatial pattern of SSS from SMAP is confirmed by the ship-based TSG. Comparison with individual Argo floats suggests the SMAP retrieval algorithm performs better in the Western Mediterranean region, but suffers from radio-frequency interference (RFI) and land contamination in the Eastern Mediterranean region and Adriatic Sea. © 2017 Elsevier Inc.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.08.021
ISSN:	00344257
Date made live:	12 Sep 2017 15:34 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/517780

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.08.021

ISSN:

00344257

Date made live:

12 Sep 2017 15:34 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/517780