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    • Aquarius Official Release Level 3 Rain-flagged Sea Surface Salinity Smoothed Standard Mapped Image Descending Monthly Data V5.0

    Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

    Aquarius Level 3 sea surface salinity (SSS) standard mapped image data contains gridded 1 degree spatial resolution SSS averaged over daily, 7 day, monthly, and seasonal time scales.This particular data set is the Monthly, Descending rain-flagged sea surface salinity smoothed product for version 5.0 of the Aquarius data set. Only retrieved values for Descending passes have been used to create this product. 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.

    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 April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
    Publisher Aquarius Project NASA/CONAE;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.5067/AQR50-3UMDE
    Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
    Category Earth Science
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id eba33b5d-990f-4585-ae60-a39911805bc5
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/CitingPODAAC
    Old Spatial {"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0},"CARTESIAN"
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 4d107eae8e805a27369a94c6fbdefb9b7e024dbef0e075f052557954bee34e67
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2011-08-25/2011-08-25

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