March 11, 2013

The Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) is pleased to announce the availability of the Level-2 product from the Combined Active-Passive (CAP) Algorithm applied to the Aquarius/SAC-D version 2.0 data.  The CAP algorithm simultaneously retrieves salinity, wind speed and wind direction by minimizing the sum of squared differences between model and observations. After testing the CAP algorithm against the Aquarius data, the least squares algorithm (LSE) performs very well for the Aquarius version 2.0 data. Data are processed through the end of February and will be augmented on monthly intervals for the next few months.  The lag is due to the delays required to have the new data necessary to recalculate the Aquarius sensor calibrations.  All users are strongly encouraged to work with V2.0 over any previous Aquarius/CAP evaluation versions.
 
The Aquarius v2.0 data sets are described and discoverable via the PO.DAAC data portal.   Access to these data is via PO.DAAC’s public FTP site (ftp://podaac-ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/allData/aquarius/L2/CAPv2/ ) and also OPeNDAP.
 
The CAP Users Guide and other primary technical documentation relating to Aquarius data, are available from the FTP site together with reader software.   General information regarding Aquarius/SAC-D mission is available from the mission website and also via PO.DAAC’s Aquarius  and salinity webpages.

Questions may be addressed to: podaac@podaac.jpl.nasa.gov

We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this announcement.