Salt is essential. Circulating through our bodies and our seas, it impacts the health of people and the planet. Salt dissolved in seawater – measured as salinity – drives currents that distribute heat and carbon around the globe. So, salt not only preserves our food, it helps to preserve our climate by contributing to global ocean circulation.
Earth is an ocean planet. Key water cycle processes – precipitation and evaporation – mostly occur over the ocean. Thus, monitoring sea surface salinity patterns provides important clues about changes in our environment.
NASA observes salinity. Merging data from satellites and other instruments, our mission is to better understand ocean circulation, the water cycle, and climate.
Latest News »
NASA Saildrone ATOMIC Field Campaign Dataset Release (30-July-20). The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the availability of the NASA-funded Saildrone data as part of the Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC). NASA Saildrone Arctic Campaign Dataset Released (18-May-20). The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the availability of the Saildrone Arctic field campaign data. New SPURS-2 Field Campaign Datasets Released (15-May-20). The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the availability of additional datasets from the NASA SPURS-2 field campaign.
Recent Publications »
Shoup, C., Roman-Stork, H., and Subrahmanyam, B. (2020). Analysis of Coupled Oceanic and Atmospheric Preconditioning for Primary Madden-Julian Oscillation Events Across ENSO Phases Agrawal, N., Pandey, V., and Kumar, P. (2020). Numerical Simulation of Tropical Cyclone Mora Using a Regional Coupled Ocean-Atmospheric Model Zhu, J., Kumar, A., and Wang, W. (2020). Intraseasonal Surface Salinity Variability and the MJO in a Climate Model Blunden, J. and Arndt, D. (Eds.) (2020). State of the Climate in 2019 Martin, M., Remy, E., Tranchant, B., King, R., Greiner, E., and Donlon, C. (2020). Observation Impact Statement on Satellite Sea Surface Salinity Data from Two Operational Global Ocean Forecasting Systems
