Sea Surface Salinity - Near Real Time - MIRAS SMOS

CoastWatch/OceanWatch produces 0.25-degree longitude/latitude Level-3 gridded sea-surface salinity (SSS) daily and 3-day mean datasets by box averaging European Space Agency (ESA) Soil Moisture – Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission’s Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) satellite observations over the global ocean.

    Data Access
    Sea Surface Salinity - Near Real Time - MIRAS SMOS

    CoastWatch/OceanWatch produces 0.25-degree longitude/latitude Level-3 gridded sea-surface salinity (SSS) daily and 3-day mean datasets by box averaging European Space Agency (ESA) Soil Moisture – Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission’s Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) satellite observations over the global ocean.

    CoastWatch/OceanWatch Level-3 SSS products are generated directly from the ESA MIRAS SMOS Level-2 swath NetCDF files (currently V6.62; see release "https://earth.esa.int/documents/10174/1854503/SMOS-Level-2-Ocean-Salinity-v662-release-note"). There are two SSS variables in V6.62 L2 NetCDF files, SSS_corr (corrected for land-sea contamination) and SSS_uncorr. The CoastWatch L3 product ingests the SSS_corr  with values between 27 - 40 PSS. These products improve the application of satellite SSS products in NOAA by minimizing the data latency to within 24 hours of Level-2 data availability.

    Short Names
    CoastWatch/OceanWatch binned-SMOS-L3
    Temporal Start Date
    May 1, 2010
    Product Families
    Sea Surface Salinity
    Measurements
    Sea Surface Salinity
    Processing Levels
    Level 3
    Spatial Coverage
    Latency Groups
    0 Hours <= 24 Hours (NRT)
    Latency Details

    24 hours

    Spatial Resolution Groups
    2km+
    Spatial Resolution Details

    0.25°

    Platforms
    Instruments
    Data Providers
    NOAA
    NESDIS
    STAR
    CoastWatch
    • V6.62 Release Notes from ESA (link is external)contains links to other SMOS SSS product documents (such as ATDB, product specs, etc.)♦
    • Barcelona Expert Center (2016). SMOS-BEC Ocean and Land Products Description. BEC-SMOS-0001-PD,Version 1.5. Technical report, BEC.
    • Reagan, J., T. Boyer, J. Antonov, and M. Zweng (2014), Comparison analysis between Aquarius sea surface salinity and World Ocean Database in situ analyzed sea surface salinity, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 119, 8122–8140, doi:10.1002/2014JC009961(link is external)♦.
    • SMOS-BEC Team 2016: SMOS-BEC Ocean and Land Products Description. BEC-SMOS-0001-PD.pdf , version 1.5
    • SMOS Team, 2014: SMOS L2 OS Input/output data definition. SO-TN-ARG-GS-009. Issue 2, Rev 25, 5 September, 2014. ARGANS 

    ** When you use our data, please reference the product citation (if available) and acknowledge "NOAA CoastWatch" **