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RSS SMAP Level 3 Sea Surface Salinity Version 3.0 Validated Release Monthly

The version 3.0 SMAP-SSS level 3, monthly gridded product is a validated standard mapped sea surface salinity (SSS) data from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory, produced operationally by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) with a one-month latency. This release builds upon the legacy of the Aquarius/SAC mission and the official NASA salinity retrieval algorithm applied now to observations from the SMAP mission. Monthly data files for this product are averages over one-month time intervals. SMAP data begins on April 1,2015 and is ongoing, with a one-month latency in processing and availability.

Several enhancements over the previous release are implemented including:

• Use of Version 4 L1B SMAP RFI filtered antenna temperatures.
• Implementation of the geophysical model function from Aquarius version 5 adapted to SMAP.
• Use of the near real time CCMP wind speed and direction data as ancillary input.
• Inclusion of IMERG rain rate for the atmospheric liquid cloud water correction and rain flagging.
• Improved computation of antenna weighted land fraction (gland) and enhanced correction for land radiation intrusion from antenna sidelobes.
• Improved correction for emissive SMAP mesh antenna.
• The salty biases at low latitudes and the fresh biases at high N latitudes that were observed in the previous release, are no longer present or are much reduced in V3.0.

Users should note that significant degradation in the performance is observed if the gain weighted land fraction (gland) exceeds 1%. Consequently, observations with gland>0.8% are not used in the Level 3 processing.
This product is provided at two spatial resolutions: 40-km and 70-km. For most open ocean applications, the 70-km products are the best to use as they have significantly lower noise.

Documentation:
RSS SMAP SSS V3.0 validated release (release notes, file and data formats, description of the algorithm, ATBD, validation)

Reference:
Meissner, T., F.J. Wentz, and D.M. Le Vine, 2018, The Salinity Retrieval Algorithms for the NASA Aquarius Version 5 and SMAP Version 3 Releases, Remote Sens., 10(7), 1121

Variables	number of observations for l3 average, sea surface salinity (1e-3), reference sea surface salinity from hycom (1e-3), average land fraction, average sea ice fraction, ancillary sea surface temperature (from cmc) (kelvin)
Zonal	Global by 0.25 deg
Meridional	Global by 0.25 deg
Vertical	Surface
Temporal	Apr 2015 to May 2019 by 1 month
Static?	no
Volume	~7MB per month
Server	public:
Source	https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/SMAP_RSS_L3_SSS_SMI_MONTHLY_V3_40KM
Acquired	November 28, 2018
APDRC contact
Supplements	RSS SMAP SSS V3.0 validated release (release notes, file and data formats, description of the algorithm, ATBD, validation)

The APDRC may be acknowledged as follows: Data provided by Asia-Pacific Data Research Center, which is a part of the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, funded in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). ©2008 International Pacific Research Center

Questions, Comments? Contact Us | Site Map Last Modified on September 4, 2019