Weekly polar sea-surface saltiness and radio brightness (Aquarius)
What it measures. Weekly maps over the polar regions of how salty the sea surface is, paired with the raw radio brightness readings the salinity is calculated from.
How it's made. Produced from the Aquarius L-band radiometer aboard the SAC-D satellite, a NASA-Argentina mission, and gridded into weekly polar maps.
How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers study ocean saltiness in high-latitude waters, where freshwater from melting ice and rivers plays a big role in ocean circulation. The included brightness readings let advanced users dig into the underlying measurements.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2011-08-25 → 2015-06-04
- Measured bySAC-D (AQUARIUS_RADIOMETER)
- Processing levelLevel 3
- Spatial extent-180, 50, 180, 87.4
- FormatsHDF5
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
The data set consists of weekly gridded Level-3 products of Aquarius L-band radiometer brightness temperature (TB) observations and Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) retrievals from the Aquarius/Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas (SAC-D) mission, developed collaboratively between the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE).
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="AQ3_TB",
version="5",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from NSIDC_CPRDBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
- Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
- Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
- A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
- Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Aquarius L3 Weekly Polar-Gridded Brightness Temperature and Sea Surface Salinity, Version 5 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION