RSS SMAP Level 3 Sea Surface Salinity Standard Validated Release 8-Day Running mean, Version 3.0

The SMAP-SSS level 3, version 3, 8-Day running mean gridded product is a validated standard mapped sea surface salinity (SSS) data from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory, produced operationally by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). This release builds upon the legacy of the Aquarius/SAC mission and the official NASA salinity retrieval algorithm applied now to observations from the SMAP mission. Daily data files for this product are based on SSS averages spanning an 8-day moving time window. SMAP data begins on April 1,2015 and is ongoing, with a one-month latency in processing and availability.

Several enhancements over the previous release are implemented including:

Users should note that significant degradation in the performance is observed if the gain weighted land fraction (gland) exceeds 1%. Consequently, observations with gland>0.8% are not used in the Level 3 processing.
This product is provided at two spatial resolutions: 40-km and 70-km. For most open ocean applications, the 70-km products are the best to use as they have significantly lower noise.

Documentation:
RSS SMAP SSS V3.0 validated release (release notes, file and data formats, description of the algorithm, ATBD, validation)

Reference:
Meissner, T., F.J. Wentz, and D.M. Le Vine, 2018, The Salinity Retrieval Algorithms for the NASA Aquarius Version 5 and SMAP Version 3 Releases, Remote Sens., 10(7), 1121

Variables
number of observations for l3 average, sea surface salinity (1e-3), reference sea surface salinity from hycom (1e-3), average land fraction, average sea ice fraction, ancillary sea surface temperature (from cmc) (kelvin)
Zonal Global by 0.25 deg
Meridional Global by 0.25 deg
Vertical Surface
Temporal Mar 31, 2015 to Jun 14, 2019 by 1 day
Static?no
Volume ~7MB per day
Serverpublic:
Source https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/SMAP_RSS_L3_SSS_SMI_8DAY-RUNNINGMEAN_V3_70KM
Acquired November 2018
APDRC contact
Supplements RSS SMAP SSS V3.0 validated release (release notes, file and data formats, description of the algorithm, ATBD, validation)