Publication Date

3-1-2021

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Remote Sensing

Volume

13

Issue

5

DOI

10.3390/rs13050831

First Page

1

Last Page

17

Abstract

The Arctic Ocean is one of the most important and challenging regions to observe—it experiences the largest changes from climate warming, and at the same time is one of the most difficult to sample because of sea ice and extreme cold temperatures. Two NASA-sponsored deployments of the Saildrone vehicle provided a unique opportunity for validating sea-surface salinity (SSS) derived from three separate products that use data from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite. To examine possible issues in resolving mesoscale-to-submesoscale variability, comparisons were also made with two versions of the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) model (Carroll, D; Menmenlis, D; Zhang, H.). The results indicate that the three SMAP products resolve the runoff signal associated with the Yukon River, with high correlation between SMAP products and Saildrone SSS. Spectral slopes, overall, replicate the-2.0 slopes associated with mesoscale-submesoscale variability. Statistically significant spatial coherences exist for all products, with peaks close to 100 km. Based on these encouraging results, future research should focus on improving derivations of satellite-derived SSS in the Arctic Ocean and integrating model results to complement remote sensing observations.

Funding Number

1587724

Funding Sponsor

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Keywords

Coastal, Sea surface salinity, Validation

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories

Download

Share

COinS