Lagrangian Reconstruction to Extract Small‐Scale Salinity Variability From SMAP Observations

Abstract

Changes in sea water salinity have important implications for the water cycle, ocean circulation, climate variability, and marine biogeochemistry (Durack et al., 2016; Vinogradova et al., 2019). Sea surface salinity (SSS) is controlled by the net impacts of evaporation and precipitation, inflow of fresh water from rivers, and formation and melting of ice. Ocean currents and mixing spread the surface salinity anomalies throughout the three-dimensional ocean and determine the salinity characteristics of each ocean basin. Despite its importance, measurements of ocean salinity are limited to (i) relatively sparse in-situ observations from different platforms and (ii) global remote sensing surface observations with low resolution from satellites. Here, we aim to obtain information at high resolution from satellite salinity observations using a Lagrangian reconstruction technique in order to study the small-scale salinity variability around the Gulf Stream (northwest Atlantic Ocean).