JPL SMAP Level 2B CAP Sea Surface Salinity V5.0 Validated Dataset

This is the PI-produced JPL SMAP-SSS V5.0, level 2B CAP, validated sea surface salinity (SSS) and extreme winds orbital/swath product from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory. 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 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 3 day 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.