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 »
JPL V5 Data Release (11-Dec-20). The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the availability of the PI-produced JPL V5.0 SMAP Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) and extreme winds data. 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.
Recent Publications »
Kolodziejczyk, N., Hamon, M., Boutin, J., Vergely, J-L., Reverdin, G., Supply, A., and Reul, N. (2020). Objective Analysis of SMOS and SMAP Sea Surface Salinity to Reduce Large Scale and Time Dependent Biases from Low to High Latitudes Reul, N., Chapron, B., Grodsky, S., Guimbard, S., Kudryavtsev, V., Foltz, G., and Balaguru, K. (2020). Satellite Observations of the Sea Surface Salinity Response to Tropical Cyclones Stammer, D., Martins, M., Köhler, J. and Köhl, A. (2020). How Well do we Know Ocean Salinity and its Changes? Lekha, J.S., Lucas, A., Sukhatme, J., Joseph, J., Ravichandran, M., Kumar, N. S., Farrar, J.T., and Sengupta, D. (2020). Quasi-Biweekly Mode of the Asian Summer Monsoon Revealed in Bay of Bengal Surface Observations Yi, D., Melnichenko, O., Hacker, P., and Potemra, J. (2020). Remote Sensing of Sea Surface Salinity Variability in the South China Sea
