Validating SMAP SSS with in situ measurements

Abstract

Sea surface salinity (SSS) retrieved from SMAP radiometer measurements is validated with in situ salinity measurements collected from Argo floats, tropical moored buoys and ship-based thermosalinograph (TSG) data. SMAP SSS achieved accuracy of 0.2 PSU on a monthly basis in comparison with Argo gridded data in the tropics and mid-latitudes. In 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 assessment of satellite retrieval. The resulting SMAP-buoy matchup analysis leads to an average standard deviation of 0.22 PSU and correlation coefficient of 0.73 on weekly scale; the average standard deviation reduced to 0.17 PSU and the correlation improved to 0.8 on monthly scale. SMAP L3 daily maps reveals salty water intrusion from the Arabian Sea into the Bay of Bengal during the Indian summer monsoon, consistent with the daily measurements collected from 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 data.