[25-May-2017] Fore, A., Yueh, S., Tang, W., and Hayashi, A.
Presented at the Global Ocean Salinity and the Water Cycle WorkshopThe Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission was launched January 31st, 2015. It is designed to measure the soil moisture over land using a combined active / passive L-band system. Due to the Aquarius mission, L-band model functions for ocean winds and salinity are already mature and may be directly applied to the SMAP mission. In contrast to Aquarius, the higher resolution and scanning geometry of SMAP allows for wide-swath ocean winds and salinities to be retrieved. In this talk we present the SMAP Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) dataset and algorithm. First we discuss the heritage of SMAP SSS algorithms from Aquarius, showing that SMAP and Aquarius show excellent agreement in regards to the ocean surface roughness correction. Next we discuss the particular strengths and weaknesses of a scanning radiometer like SMAP as compared to a push-broom system such as Aquarius. Then, we give an overview of some newly developed algorithms that are only relevant to the SMAP system, such as a new galaxy correction and a land correction enabling SMAP SSS retrievals to be done up to 40 km from coast. Finally we discuss the various L2B and L3 datasets available from SMAP and where they may be obtained.