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    • RSS SMAP Level 2C Sea Surface Salinity V6.0 Validated Dataset

    Metadata Updated: April 9, 2026

    The RSS SMAP level 2C sea surface salinity V6.0 dataset produced by the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and sponsored by the NASA Ocean Salinity Science Team, is a validated product that provides orbital/swath data on sea surface salinity (SSS) derived from the NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. The SMAP satellite was launched on 31 January 2015 with a near-polar orbit at an inclination of 98 degrees and an altitude of 685 km. It has an ascending node time of 6 pm and is sun-synchronous. With its 1000km swath, SMAP achieves global coverage in approximately 3 days, but has an exact orbit repeat cycle of 8 days. Malfunction of the SMAP scatterometer on 7 July, 2015, has necessitated the use of collocated wind speed, primarily from WindSat, for the surface roughness correction required for the surface salinity retrieval.

    The major changes in Version 6.0 from Version 5.0 are: (1) Removal of biases during the first few months of the SMAP mission that are related to the operation of the SMAP radar during that time. (2) Mitigation of biases that depend on the SMAP look angle. (3) Mitigation of salty biases at high Northern latitudes. (4) Revised sun-glint flag. The SMAP-SSS L2C product includes data for a range of parameters: derived sea surface salinity (SSS) with SSS-uncertainty, brightness temperatures for each radiometer polarization, antenna temperatures, collocated wind speed, data and ancillary reference surface salinity data from HYCOM, rain rate, quality flags, and navigation data. Each data file covers one 98-minute orbit (15 files per day), is available in netCDF-4 file format with about 4 days l atency. Data begins on April 1,2015 and is ongoing. Observations are global in extent with an approximate spatial resolution of 40KM. Note that while a SSS 40KM variable is also included in the product for most open ocean applications, The standard product of the SMAP Version 6.0 release is the smoothed salinity product with a spatial resolution of approximately 70 km.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date April 9, 2026

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date April 9, 2026
    Publisher RSS;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.5067/SMP60-2SOCS
    Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
    Category Earth Science
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id 6369ef4d-4b14-4d6b-b68c-03387fafb933
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
    Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90}
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 086fbed1a7147593d4706ed27e41a07b0e8c2f5d3c9dd6ebf5523c4a880147a8
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial

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