Sea Surface Salinity with SMOS
Abstract: The mission to
observe the Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) from the space is not really new because
it has been started from long time ago. The first mission was the Skylab which
used a 1.4 GHz microwave radiometer in 1970’s. But this mission is still not as
comprehensive as other missions which observe such as Sea Surface Temperature
(SST), Sea Surface Height (SSH), Ocean Color, and so on. Realizing the
importance of SSS distribution in the ocean and its influences to the Earth’s
climate system has motivated the scientists to develop a new technique in
observing the SSS from space and lead a mission called the SMOS mission which
was launched in November 2, 2011. Besides observing the SSS, this mission
observes the Soil Moisture as well. The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS)
mission aims to obtain global and regular measurements on the soil moisture and
the ocean salinity. These measurements are essential for climate and
hydrological models, among other purposes. SMOS payload is a L band (21 cm, 1.4
GHz) 2D interferometric radiometer on a generic Proteus platform. The mission
lifetime is at least 3 years (0.5 for commissioning and 2.5 for normal
operation) + 2 years (extended operation) + 10 years for the post-mission
processing. Raw physical data, level 1 and level 2 products will be produced by
the PDPC (SMOS Payload Data and Processing Centre). It is an ESA center located
in Villafranca (Spain) and operated under the responsibility of ESA. The SMOS
Ocean Salinity objective is accuracy better than 0.1 psu, with 10 days to
monthly grid scale (200 km).
Penulis: Mulyadi Abdul Wahid
Kode Jurnal: jptlisetrodd170417
