Sea Surface Salinity

	Sea surface salinity observations contribute to monitoring the global water cycle (evaporation, precipitation and glacier and river runoff). On large scales, surface salinity can be used to infer long-term changes of the global hydrological cycle. Surface salinity, together with surface temperature, is indicative of the surface expression of ocean frontal features and eddies.
	Domain:	Ocean
	Subdomain:	Physical
	Scientific Area:	Physical Properties
	ECV Steward:	Tony Lee
	Products:	Sea Surface Salinity

Sea Surface Salinity Map

Figure: NASA Aquarius Mission - SMAP Sea Surface Salinity, April 2016.

Source: https://aquarius.umaine.edu/cgi/gal_smap.htm

ECV Products and Requirements

These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).

The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Sea-Surface Salinity.

Products			Sea-surface Salinity
	(*)	Unit	Values
Horizontal Resolution	G	km	10
	B
	T		50-100
Vertical Resolution	G		-
	B		-
	T		-
Temporal Resolution	G	d	1-3
	B
	T		7
Timeliness	G	d	7
	B
	T		30
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma)	G	1	0.1
	B
	T		0.2
Stability	G	1/decade	0.01
	B
	T		0.1

(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful

Data Sources

This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.

The Global Temperature and Salinity Profile Programme (GTSPP)

https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/GTSPP/access_data/index.html

Physical Oceanographic Distributed Active Archive Center (PODAAC)

http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/aquarius

Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS (CATDS)

http://www.catds.fr/

Argo gridded In situ product

http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Gridded_fields.html/Argo/Products/ISAS-T-S-fie…