Assessing Temporal Aliasing in Satellite-Based Surface Salinity Measurements

Abstract

he Aquarius/Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-D (SAC-D) salinity remote sensing mission is intended to provide global mapping of sea surface salinity (SSS) fields over the next few years. Temporal and spatial averages of the satellite salinity retrievals produce monthly mean fields on 1° grids with target accuracies of 0.2 psu. One issue of relevance for the satellite-derived products is the potential for temporal aliasing of rapid fluctuations into the climate (monthly averaged) values of interest. Global daily SSS fields from a data-assimilating, eddy-resolving Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) solution are used to evaluate whether the potential aliasing error is large enough to affect the accuracy of the SSS retrievals. For comparison, salinity data collected at a few in situ stations over the tropical oceans are also used. Based on the HYCOM daily series, over many oceanic regions, a significant part of the total salinity variability is contributed by rapid fluctuations at periods aliased in the satellite retrievals. Estimates of the implicit aliasing error in monthly mean salinity estimates amount to 0.02 psu on average and >0.1 psu in some coastal, tropical, western boundary current, and Arctic regions. Comparison with in situ measurements suggests that HYCOM can underestimate the effect at some locations. While local aliased variance can be significant, the estimated impact of aliasing noise on the overall Aquarius system noise is negligible on average, when combined with effects of other instrument and geophysical errors. Effects of aliased variance are strongest at the shortest periods (<6 months) and become negligible at the annual period.