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Remote Sensing Advances for Earth System Science pp 75–88Cite as

The Impact of Near-Surface Salinity Structure on SMOS Retrievals

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Abstract

The European Space Agency recently launched their Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, providing measurements of sea surface salinity on a global scale for the first time. However, SMOS is only able to sense the upper 1 cm of the ocean, and there are questions as to how representative this point measurement is of the upper several metres of the water column. Here we present results from investigations into near-surface salinity structure. These observations were made using a novel, upwardly rising, microstructure profiler and the data came from the tropical North Atlantic Ocean. Analysis is presented whereby the in situ data was used to quantify the strength of near-surface salinity gradients in this region. A comparison was also conducted between the in situ observations and the co-located SMOS Level 3 data. This showed that the difference between these two datasets was normally larger than the salinity gradients seen in the upper 5 m of the ocean. Effectively, this implies that near-surface salinity gradients cannot explain the discrepancy between the two datasets. Future research is required to repeat this analysis using higher temporal resolution Level 2 data.

Keywords

  • Turbulent Kinetic Energy
  • Internal Wave
  • Diurnal Cycle
  • Wave Breaking
  • Fluid Parcel

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-16952-1_5
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Acknowledgements

KTW acknowledges a fellowship jointly funded by the European Space Agency and the Irish Research Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

    K. T. Walesby & B. Ward

Authors
  1. K. T. Walesby
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  2. B. Ward
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Correspondence to K. T. Walesby .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. European Space Agency, ESA-ESRIN, EO Science, Applications and Future Technologies Department, VIa Galileo Galilei SN, 00044 Frascati, Roma, Italy

    Dr. Diego Fernández-Prieto

  2. Telespazio-Vega for European Space Agency, ESA-ESTEC, Mission Science Division, Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ, Noordwijk, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Dr. Roberto Sabia

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Walesby, K.T., Ward, B. (2016). The Impact of Near-Surface Salinity Structure on SMOS Retrievals. In: Fernández-Prieto, D., Sabia, R. (eds) Remote Sensing Advances for Earth System Science. Springer Earth System Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16952-1_5

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