The Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) is pleased to announce the availability of new Level-2 and 3 datasets from the JPL Combined Active-Passive (CAP) Algorithm applied to version 3.0 of the Aquarius/SAC-D data. L3 datasets include both 7-day rolling average and monthly CAP sea surface salinity (SSS), rain corrected SSS and wind speed mapped products. The CAP algorithm simultaneously retrieves salinity, wind speed and wind direction by minimizing the sum of squared differences between model and observations. Enhancements in CAP V3.0 include improved correction of reflected galactic radiation, optimal antenna pattern correction, geophysical model functions and cost function constraints to cross wind directions, and the introduction of rain corrected salinity retrieval based on collocated SSMI/S and WindSAT data. Data are processed through June 2014, and will be augmented on monthly intervals for the next few months. This lag is due to the delays required to have the new data necessary to recalculate and confirm the sensor calibrations. All users are strongly encouraged to work with v3.0 over any prior CAP versions.
The V3.0 CAP 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.jpl.nasa.gov/allData/aquarius/)
and also via OPeNDAP, and THREDDS.
L3 CAP data set visualization and subsetting is available via LAS.
The CAP
V3.0 ATBD & Users Guide and other primary technical documentation relating to the CAP V3.0 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