Retrieval of Sea Surface Salinity and Wind from The NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission Data

Abstract:

NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, the first Earth Science Decadal Survey mission, was launched January 31, 2015 to provide high-resolution, frequent-revisit global mapping of soil moisture. SMAP has two instruments, a polarimetric radiometer and a multi-polarization synthetic aperture radar. Both instruments operate at L-band frequencies (~ 1GHz) and share a single 6-m rotating mesh antenna, producing a fixed incidence angle conical scan at 40⁰ across a 1000-km swath and a 2-3 day global revisit.

The SMAP SSS and ocean surface wind retrieval algorithm developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory leverages the QuikSCAT and Aquarius algorithms to account for the two-look geometry (fore and aft looks from the conical scan) and dual-polarization observations for simultaneous retrieval of SSS and wind speed. The retrieval algorithm has been applied to more than three months of SMAP radiometer data. Comparison with the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) wind speed suggests that the SMAP wind speed reaches an accuracy of about 0.7 ms^-1. The preliminary assessment of the SMAP SSS products gridded at 50 km spatial resolution and weekly intervals is promising. The spatial patterns of the SSS agree well with climatological distributions, but exhibit several unique spatial and temporal features. The temporal evolutions of freshwater plumes from several major rivers, such as the Amazon, Niger, Congo, Ganges, and Mississippi, are all consistent with the timing of rainy and dry seasons, indicated in the SMAP’s soil moisture products. Rigorous accuracy assessment will be performed by comparison with in situ SSS data from buoys and ARGO floats. The SMAP evaluation products will be released to the public prior to November 2015.