Near-surface salinity stratification observed by SMOS under rainy conditions

ESA´s Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Earth Explorer mission globally measures ocean salinity every three days with a Microwave Imaging Radiometer using the Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) radiometer. Also 7-day global ocean salinity measurements are available from NASA´s Aquarius (AQ) L-band push-broom radiometer on-board of Aquarius/SAC-D satellite. The Central Florida Remote Sensing Laboratory has analyzed AQ sea surface salinity (SSS) retrievals in the presence of rain and has developed a Rain Impact Model (RIM) that predicts transient near-surface salinity stratification based upon the corresponding rain accumulation over the previous 24 hours. The objective of this paper is to extend this analysis to SMOS and perform spatial correlations between SMOS salinity images with those predicted by RIM. The aim of this work is to better understand the processes of near-surface salinity stratification, which impacts the interpretation of satellite based SSS measurements to measure the ocean bulk salinity (5-10 m depth).