NASA JPL Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center

nasa-podaac-aquarius_l2_sss_cap_v4

Aquarius CAP Level 2 Sea Surface Salinity, Wind Speed & Direction Data V4.0

The version 4.0 Aquarius CAP Level 2 product contains the third release of the AQUARIUS/SAC-D orbital/swath data based on the Combined Active Passive (CAP) algorithm. CAP is a P.I. produced data set developed and provided by the JPL Climate Oceans and Solid Earth group (S. Yueh). This Level 2 data set contains sea surface salinity (SSS), wind speed and wind direction data derived from 3 different radiometers and the onboard scatterometer. The CAP algorithm simultaneously retrieves the salinity, wind speed and direction by minimizing the sum of squared differences between model and observations. The main improvement of CAP V4.0 is calibration of the rain roughness correction geophysical model function to HYCOM SSS adjusted by the Rain Impact Model (RIM) to account for rain induced near surface stratification. Rain-corrected salinity, wind speed and direction data variables are also provided with the CAP V4.0 L2 data. Rain corrected salinity retrieval at L2 is based on collocation with ancillary rain rate from NOAA CMORPH at 0.25 degree and 30 minute resolution, replacing the SSMI/S and WindSAT data previously used for this in CAP V3.0. Each L2 data file covers one 98 minute orbit. The Aquarius instrument is onboard the AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite, a collaborative effort between NASA and the Argentinian Space Agency Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE). The instrument consists of three radiometers in push broom alignment at incidence angles of 29, 38, and 46 degrees incidence angles relative to the shadow side of the orbit. Footprints for the beams are: 76 km (along-track) x 94 km (cross-track), 84 km x 120 km and 96km x 156 km, yielding a total cross-track swath of 370 km. The radiometers measure brightness temperature at 1.413 GHz in their respective horizontal and vertical polarizations (TH and TV). A scatterometer operating at 1.26 GHz measures ocean backscatter in each footprint that is used for surface roughness corrections in the estimation of salinity. The scatterometer has an approximate 390km swath.

podaac.jpl.nasa.gov

http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/AQUARIUS_L2_SSS_CAP_V4

Identified by : AQUARIUS_L2_SSS_CAP_V4

This dataset was released on September 24, 2015.

The time range for this dataset is August 25, 2011 to June 07, 2015 (12:00 PM).

The spatial range for this dataset is -90° to 90° latitude, and -180° to 180° longitude. map (center)

This dataset uses data from an instance of the aquarius-l-band-radiometer instrument on the sac-d-aquarius platform.
This dataset uses data from an instance of the aquarius-l-band-scatterometer instrument on the sac-d-aquarius platform.

Also known as :

• dataset AQUARIUS_L2_SSS_CAP_V4 (podaac lexicon)
• datasetId PODAAC-AQR40-2TOCS (podaac lexicon)