Aquarius Official Release Level 3 Sea Surface Spiciness Standard Mapped Image Descending Daily Data V5.0

Aquarius Level 3 sea surface spiciness standard mapped image data contains gridded 1 degree spatial resolution spice data averaged over daily, 7 day, monthly, and seasonal time scales. This particular data set is the Daily, Descending sea surface spiciness product for version 5.0 of the Aquarius data set. 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	June 23, 2026, 01:48 (UTC)
Created	April 1, 2025, 14:30 (UTC)
accessLevel	public
bureauCode	{026:00}
catalog_conformsTo	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id	8e9297af-2532-4449-bba5-772573396698
harvest_source_id	b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title	Science Discovery Engine
identifier	10.5067/AQR50-3P1DE
license	https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified	2026-06-15T22:16:01Z
programCode	{026:000}
publisher	Aquarius Project NASA/CONAE;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
resource-type	Dataset
source_datajson_identifier	true
source_hash	d0d66e14c7d7e2b925c007cb6f3850b6bef51465c1378c5b6e77de893afe0045
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"}