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    • RSS SMAP Level 2C Sea Surface Salinity V6.0 Validated Dataset

    Metadata Updated: September 18, 2025

    The RSS SMAP level 2C sea surface salinity V6.0 dataset produced by the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and sponsored by the NASA Ocean Salinity Science Team, is a validated product that provides orbital/swath data on sea surface salinity (SSS) derived from the NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. The SMAP satellite was launched on 31 January 2015with 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. Malfunction of the SMAP scatterometer on 7 July, 2015, has necessitated the use of collocated wind speed, primarily from WindSat, for the surface roughness correction required for the surface salinity retrieval.The major changes in Version 6.0 from Version 5.0 are: (1) Removal of biases during the first few months of the SMAP mission that are related to the operation of the SMAP radar during that time. (2) Mitigation of biases that depend on the SMAP look angle. (3) Mitigation of salty biases at high Northern latitudes. (4) Revised sun-glint flag.The SMAP-SSS L2C product includes data for a range of parameters: derived sea surface salinity (SSS) with SSS-uncertainty, brightness temperatures for each radiometer polarization, antenna temperatures, collocated wind speed, data and ancillary reference surface salinity data from HYCOM, rain rate, quality flags, and navigation data. Each data file covers one 98-minute orbit (15 files per day), is available in netCDF-4 file format with about 4 days latency.Data begins on April 1,2015 and is ongoing. Observations are global in extent with an approximate spatial resolution of 40KM. Note that while a SSS 40KM variable is also included in the product for most open ocean applications, The standard product of the SMAP Version 6.0 release is the smoothed salinity product with a spatial resolution of approximately 70 km.

    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.

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    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 18, 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 18, 2025
    Publisher RSS;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.5067/SMP60-2SOCS
    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 03924ac8-8d42-4cef-8f08-c9aaa2badf36
    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 18d00f85e803dd41c1caba4b573eb665ca93e529d5487966435177365b87fd68
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2015-04-01/2015-04-01

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