Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Aquarius Official Release Level 2 Sea Surface Salinity & Wind Speed Data V5.0

Metadata Updated: December 7, 2023

The version 5.0 Aquarius Level 2 product is the official third release of the orbital/swath data from AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission. The Aquarius Level 2 data set contains sea surface salinity (SSS) and wind speed data derived from 3 different radiometers and the onboard scatterometer. Included also in the Level 2 data are the horizontal and vertical brightness temperatures (TH and TV) for each radiometer, ancillary data, flags, converted telemetry and navigation data. Each 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. Enhancements to the version 5.0 Level 2 data relative to v4.0 include: improvement of the salinity retrieval geophysical model for SST bias, estimates of SSS uncertainties (systematic and random components), and inclusion of a new spiciness variable.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date December 1, 2022
Metadata Updated Date December 7, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Graphic Preview

Thumbnail

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date December 1, 2022
Metadata Updated Date December 7, 2023
Publisher NASA/JPL/PODAAC
Maintainer
Identifier C2036882456-POCLOUD
Data First Published 2017-10-21
Language en-US
Data Last Modified 2017-12-07
Category AQUARIUS SAC-D, geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://data.nasa.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Citation NASA Aquarius project. 2017-12-07. Aquarius Official Release Level 2 Sea Surface Salinity. Version 5.0. Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity Products. Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Rd.; Greeenbelt, MD., 20771, USA. Archived by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government, NASA/GSFC OBPG. https://doi.org/10.5067/AQR50-2SOCS. http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/SeaSurfaceSalinity/Aquarius. NASA Aquarius project, NASA/GSFC OBPG, 2017-12-07, Aquarius Official Release Level 2 Sea Surface Salinity & Wind Speed Data V5.0, http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/SeaSurfaceSalinity/Aquarius.
Creator NASA Aquarius project
Graphic Preview Description Thumbnail
Graphic Preview File https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/Podaac/thumbnails/AQUARIUS_L2_SSS_V5.jpg
Harvest Object Id 4cf852f0-2aae-45dc-9651-4b5e98634aa5
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://doi.org/10.5067/AQR50-2SOCS
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -180.0 -90.0 180.0 90.0
Program Code 026:001
Release Place Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Rd.; Greeenbelt, MD., 20771, USA
Series Name Aquarius Official Release Level 2 Sea Surface Salinity
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 0cc9417d3057ccb5ded1e2d282fca6567bb7bc1ec502d99986b0b3e803ea9797
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 2011-08-25T00:01:01Z/2015-06-07T12:51:00Z

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.