Aquarius Yields NASA's First Global Map of Ocean Salinity

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Alan Buis 818-354-0474
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Steve Cole 202-358-0918
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News release: 2011-300 Sept. 22, 2011

Aquarius Yields NASA's First Global Map of Ocean Salinity

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-300&cid=release_2011-300

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's new Aquarius instrument has produced its first global map of the
salinity of the ocean surface, providing an early glimpse of the mission's anticipated discoveries.

Aquarius, which is aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas) observatory, is
making NASA's first space observations of ocean surface salinity variations -- a key component of
Earth's climate. Salinity changes are linked to the cycling of freshwater around the planet and
influence ocean circulation.

"Aquarius' salinity data are showing much higher quality than we expected to see this early in the
mission," said Aquarius Principal Investigator Gary Lagerloef of Earth & Space Research in Seattle.
"Aquarius soon will allow scientists to explore the connections between global rainfall, ocean
currents and climate variations."

The new map, which shows a tapestry of salinity patterns, demonstrates Aquarius' ability to detect
large-scale salinity distribution features clearly and with sharp contrast. The map is a composite of
the data since Aquarius became operational on Aug. 25. The mission was launched June 10 from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Aquarius/SAC-D is a collaboration between NASA and
Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE).

"Aquarius/SAC-D already is advancing our understanding of ocean surface salinity and Earth's water
cycle," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division at agency headquarters in
Washington. "Aquarius is making continuous, consistent, global measurements of ocean salinity,
including measurements from places we have never sampled before."

To produce the map, Aquarius scientists compared the early data with ocean surface salinity
reference data. Although the early data contain some uncertainties, and months of additional
calibration and validation work remain, scientists are impressed by the data's quality.

"Aquarius has exposed a pattern of ocean surface salinity that is rich in variability across a wide
range of scales," said Aquarius science team member Arnold Gordon, professor of oceanography at
Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y., and at the university's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
"This is a great moment in the history of oceanography. The first image raises many questions that
oceanographers will be challenged to explain."

The map shows several well-known ocean salinity features such as higher salinity in the subtropics;
higher average salinity in the Atlantic Ocean compared to the Pacific and Indian oceans; and lower
salinity in rainy belts near the equator, in the northernmost Pacific Ocean and elsewhere. These
features are related to large-scale patterns of rainfall and evaporation over the ocean, river outflow
and ocean circulation. Aquarius will monitor how these features change and study their link to
climate and weather variations.

Other important regional features are evident, including a sharp contrast between the arid, high-
salinity Arabian Sea west of the Indian subcontinent, and the low-salinity Bay of Bengal to the east,
which is dominated by the Ganges River and south Asia monsoon rains. The data also show
important smaller details, such as a larger-than-expected extent of low-salinity water associated with
outflow from the Amazon River.

Aquarius was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., for NASA's Earth Systems Science Pathfinder Program. JPL is
managing Aquarius through its commissioning phase and will archive mission data. Goddard will
manage Aquarius mission operations and process science data. CONAE provided the SAC-D
spacecraft and the mission operations center.

The new map is available at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14786 .

For more information about Aquarius/SAC-D, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/aquarius and
http://www.conae.gov.ar/eng/principal.html .

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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