This is the PI-produced SMAP sea water salinity, level 2 v1.0 orbital/swath product from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory. It is based on the Parameterized Rain Impact Model (PRIM) developed at the University of Central Florida (UCF) Central Florida Remote Sensing Lab (CFRSL), Orlando, FL; University of Washington (UW) Applied Physics Lab (APL), Seattle, WA.
The PRIM product range extended from March 31, 2015 to September 30, 2021. It includes data for a range of parameters: derived SMAP sea water salinity at surface, 1m depth and 5m depth, and probability of salinity stratification (PSS), rainfall rate and wind speed data. Each data file covers one 98-minute orbit (15 files per day), and corresponds to a JPL SMAP Level 2B CAP Sea Surface Salinity V5.0 file which corresponds to a single orbit on a given day.
The SMAP satellite is in a near-polar orbit at an inclination of 98 degrees and an altitude of 685 km. It has an ascending node time of 6 pm and is sun-synchronous. With its 1000km swath, SMAP achieves global coverage in approximately 3 days, but has an exact orbit repeat cycle of 8 days. On board Instruments include a highly sensitive L-band radiometer operating at 1.41GHz and an L-band 1.26GHz radar sensor providing complementary active and passive sensing capabilities. Observations are global in extent and provided at 25km swath grid with an approximate spatial resolution of 60 km.