RSS SMAP Level 3 Sea Surface Salinity Standard Mapped Image Monthly V5.3 Evaluation Dataset

The RSS SMAP Level 3 Sea Surface Salinity Standard Mapped Image Monthly V5.3 Evaluation Dataset produced by the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and sponsored by the NASA Ocean Salinity Science Team, is a evaluation 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 2015 with 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 evaluation Version 5.3 is identical to the Version 6.0 validated release with the exception that Version 5.3 uses the Version 5 L1B antenna temperatures (TA) as input. The V6 L1B TA uses a lower TA threshold for RFI exclusion. Until the full back-processing of V6.0 is complete, the evaluation Version 5.3 can and should be used instead. Version 5.3 has been processed from the beginning of the SMAP mission to the end of 2023, and each data file is available in netCDF-4 file format. 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 5.3 release is the smoothed salinity product with a spatial resolution of approximately 70 km.