Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Sea Surface Salinity Near Major River Mouths of the World Ocean Inferred from Gridded Satellite and In-Situ Salinity Products

Fournier, Severine; Lee, Tong

doi:10.3390/rs13040728

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Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Sea Surface Salinity Near Major River Mouths of the World Ocean Inferred from Gridded Satellite and In-Situ Salinity Products

Severine Fournier

and

Tong Lee

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Academic Editor: Andrew Clive Banks

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(4), 728; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040728

Received: 20 January 2021 / Revised: 13 February 2021 / Accepted: 14 February 2021 / Published: 17 February 2021

(This article belongs to the Section Ocean Remote Sensing)

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Abstract

Large rivers are key components of the land-ocean branch of the global water and biogeochemical cycles. River discharges can have important influences on physical, biological, optical, and chemical processes in coastal oceans. It is, therefore, of importance to routinely monitor the time-varying dispersal patterns of river plumes. The European Space Agency (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellites provide Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) observations capable of characterizing the spatial and temporal variability of major river plumes. The main objective of this study is to examine the consistency of SSS products, from these two missions, and two in-situ gridded salinity products in depicting SSS variations on seasonal to interannual time scales within a few hundred kilometers of major river mouths. We show that SSS from SMOS and SMAP satellites have good consistency in depicting seasonal and interannual SSS variations near major river mouths. The two gridded in-situ products underestimate these variations substantially. This underestimation, most notably associated with the low SSS season following the high-discharge season, is attributable to the limited in-situ sampling of the river plumes when they are the most active. This work underscores the importance of using satellite SSS to study river plumes, as well as to evaluate and constrain models. View Full-Text

Keywords: sea surface salinity; river plumes; SMAP; SMOS; Argo

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MDPI and ACS Style

Fournier, S.; Lee, T. Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Sea Surface Salinity Near Major River Mouths of the World Ocean Inferred from Gridded Satellite and In-Situ Salinity Products. Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 728. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040728

AMA Style

Fournier S, Lee T. Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Sea Surface Salinity Near Major River Mouths of the World Ocean Inferred from Gridded Satellite and In-Situ Salinity Products. Remote Sensing. 2021; 13(4):728. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040728

Chicago/Turabian Style

Fournier, Severine, and Tong Lee. 2021. "Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Sea Surface Salinity Near Major River Mouths of the World Ocean Inferred from Gridded Satellite and In-Situ Salinity Products" Remote Sensing 13, no. 4: 728. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040728

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Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Sea Surface Salinity Near Major River Mouths of the World Ocean Inferred from Gridded Satellite and In-Situ Salinity Products

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