The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the release of the level 2C version 5.0 near real-time (NRT) SMAP Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) dataset from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS).
The major differences to the standard version 5.0 data product are: (1) the NRT version of the L1B SMAP antenna temperatures is used, (2) the latest 6-hourly 0.25 degree wind speed and direction are used for the ancillary wind speed and direction input, (3) the CMC SST from 2 days earlier is used for the ancillary SST input, (4) the sea-ice mask of the 3-day aggregate RSS AMSR-2 Air-Sea Essential Climate Variables (AS-ECV) data set from 2-days earlier is used for the sea-ice flag, (5) no correction for sea-ice contamination is performed, it is recommended to use only SMAP data that are classified to be within sea-ice zone 0 for open ocean scene and no sea-ice contamination.