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JPL SMAP Level 2B Near Real-time CAP Sea Surface Salinity V5.0 Validated Dataset

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

This is the PI-produced JPL SMAP-SSS V5.0, level 2B NRT CAP, validated sea surface salinity (SSS) and extreme winds orbital/swath product from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory available in near real-time with a latency of about 6 hours. It is based on the Combined Active-Passive (CAP) retrieval algorithm developed at JPL originally in the context of Aquarius/SAC-D and now extended to SMAP. JPL SMAP V5.0 SSS is based on the newly released SMAP V5 Level-1 Brightness Temperatures (TB). An enhanced calibration methodology has been applied to the brightness temperatures, which improves absolute radiometric calibration and reduces the biases between ascending and descending passes. The improved SMAP TB Level 1 TB will enhance the use of SMAP Level-1 data for other applications, such as sea surface salinity and winds. The JPL SMAP-SSS L2B CAP NRT product includes data for a range of parameters: derived SMAP sea surface salinity, SSS uncertainty and wind speed/direction data for extreme winds, brightness temperatures for each radiometer polarization, ancillary reference surface salinity, ice concentration, wind and wave height data, quality flags, and navigation data. Each data file covers one 98-minute orbit (15 files per day). Data begins on April 1,2015 and is ongoing, with a 6 hour latency in processing and availability. Observations are global in extent and provided at 25km swath grid with an approximate spatial resolution of 60 km.The SMAP satellite is in a near-polar orbit at an inclination of 98 degrees and an altitude of 685 km. It has an ascending node time of 6 pm and is sun-synchronous. With its 1000km swath, SMAP achieves global coverage in approximately 3 days, but has an exact orbit repeat cycle of 8 days. On board Instruments include a highly sensitive L-band radiometer operating at 1.41GHz and an L-band 1.26GHz radar sensor providing complementary active and passive sensing capabilities. Malfunction of the SMAP scatterometer on 7 July, 2015, has necessitated the use of collocated wind speed for the surface roughness correction required for the surface salinity retrieval.

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

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher NASA/JPL/SMAP;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/SMP50-2NOCS
Data Last Modified 2025-09-11
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 1fc66c63-f592-49dd-979d-333e5216fa3f
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/CitingPODAAC
Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90}
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 7cbdabc672905d1c517b0fa1323208e8e123d490e45d5424151458e90899e8a2
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 2015-04-01/2015-04-01

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