Sea surface salinity short-term variability in the tropics

Bingham, Frederick M.; Brodnitz, Susannah

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-1437-2021

Articles | Volume 17, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-1437-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-17-1437-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 5

Research article

|

22 Oct 2021

Research article |

| 22 Oct 2021

Sea surface salinity short-term variability in the tropics

Frederick M. Bingham and Susannah Brodnitz

Data sets

OSCAR third degree resolution ocean surface currents ESR https://doi.org/10.5067/OSCAR-03D01

ECCO Data Portal NASA https://data.nas.nasa.gov/ecco/data.php

Data Display and Delivery NOAA https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/drupal/disdel/

Short summary

Satellite measurements of sea surface salinity (SSS) are compared with measurements in the ocean to verify the quality of the satellite data. SSS satellites measure average values over a footprint with size of ~100 km, whereas ocean values are usually taken at a single point in space and time. Using SSS data from a network of buoys across the global tropics, we estimate the size of the mismatch between satellite and in situ measurements to better understand the error structure of the satellite.