Aquarius Official Release Level 3 Sea Surface Salinity Standard Mapped Image Descending Mission Cumulative Data V5.0

Aquarius Level 3 sea surface salinity (SSS) standard mapped image data contains gridded 1 degree spatial resolution SSS averaged over daily, 7 day, monthly, and seasonal time scales. This particular data set is the mission series mean or cumulative, Descending sea surface salinity product for version 5.0 of the Aquarius data set. Only retrieved values for Descending passes have been used to create this product. The Aquarius instrument is onboard the AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite, a collaborative effort between NASA and the Argentinian Space Agency Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE). The instrument consists of three radiometers in push broom alignment at incidence angles of 29, 38, and 46 degrees incidence angles relative to the shadow side of the orbit. Footprints for the beams are: 76 km (along-track) x 94 km (cross-track), 84 km x 120 km and 96km x 156 km, yielding a total cross-track swath of 370 km. The radiometers measure brightness temperature at 1.413 GHz in their respective horizontal and vertical polarizations (TH and TV). A scatterometer operating at 1.26 GHz measures ocean backscatter in each footprint that is used for surface roughness corrections in the estimation of salinity. The scatterometer has an approximate 390km swath.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field	Value
Maintainer	Earthdata Forum
Last Updated	August 18, 2026, 01:51 (UTC)
Created	April 1, 2025, 14:28 (UTC)
accessLevel	public
bureauCode	{026:00}
catalog_conformsTo	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id	52228224-7c0d-4005-a2a7-ab257dcda21f
harvest_source_id	b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title	Science Discovery Engine
identifier	10.5067/AQR50-3SCDE
license	https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified	2026-08-10T22:16:02Z
programCode	{026:000}
publisher	AR/CREDAS;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
resource-type	Dataset
source_datajson_identifier	true
source_hash	cf58f6d21cde06103df8ba67b5e9c1c185dab99185c6d8a32f9a2374061d990e
source_schema_version	1.1
spatial	["CARTESIAN", [{"EastBoundingCoordinate": 180.0, "NorthBoundingCoordinate": 90, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -90, "WestBoundingCoordinate": -180.0}]]
temporal	2011-08-25/2015-06-07
theme	{"Earth Science"}