In:
Ocean Science, Copernicus GmbH, Vol. 15, No. 5 ( 2019-09-06), p. 1191-1206
Abstract:
Abstract. Recently two gridded sea surface salinity (SSS) products that cover
the Arctic Ocean have been derived from the European Space Agency (ESA)'s
Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission: one developed by the
Barcelona Expert Centre (BEC) and the other developed by the Ocean Salinity
Expertise Center of the Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS at
IFREMER (The French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea) (CEC). The uncertainties of these two SSS products are quantified
during the period of 2011–2013 against other SSS products: one data
assimilative regional reanalysis; one data-driven reprocessing in the
framework of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Services (CMEMS);
two climatologies – the 2013 World Ocean Atlas (WOA) and the Polar science
center Hydrographic Climatology (PHC); and in situ datasets, both
assimilated and independent. The CMEMS reanalysis comes from the TOPAZ4
system, which assimilates a large set of ocean and sea-ice observations using
an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). Another CMEMS product is the
Multi-OBservations reprocessing (MOB), a multivariate objective analysis
combining in situ data with satellite SSS. The monthly root mean squared
deviations (RMSD) of both SMOS products, compared to the TOPAZ4 reanalysis,
reach 1.5 psu in the Arctic summer, while in the winter months the BEC SSS
is closer to TOPAZ4 with a deviation of 0.5 psu. The comparison of CEC
satellite SSS against in situ data shows Atlantic Water that is too fresh in the
Barents Sea, the Nordic Seas, and in the northern North Atlantic Ocean,
consistent with the abnormally fresh deviations from TOPAZ4. When
compared to independent in situ data in the Beaufort Sea, the BEC
product shows the smallest bias (〈 0.1 psu) in summer and the
smallest RMSD (1.8 psu). The results also show that all six SSS products
share a common challenge: representing freshwater masses (〈 24 psu)
in the central Arctic. Along the Norwegian coast and at the southwestern
coast of Greenland, the BEC SSS shows smaller errors than TOPAZ4 and
indicates the potential value of assimilating the satellite-derived salinity
in this system.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
1812-0792
DOI:
10.5194/os-15-1191-2019
Language:
English
Publisher:
Copernicus GmbH
Publication Date:
2019
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2183769-7
Permalink
