Salt is essential. Circulating through our bodies and our seas, it impacts the health of people and the planet. Salt dissolved in seawater – measured as salinity – drives currents that distribute heat and carbon around the globe. So, salt not only preserves our food, it helps to preserve our climate by contributing to global ocean circulation.
Earth is an ocean planet. Key water cycle processes – precipitation and evaporation – mostly occur over the ocean. Thus, monitoring sea surface salinity patterns provides important clues about changes in our environment.
NASA observes salinity. Merging data from satellites and other instruments, our mission is to better understand ocean circulation, the water cycle, and climate.
Latest News »
Satellites Help Track Ocean Acidification in the Bay of Bengal (13-Dec-19). Scientists explore the use of satellites, including NASA's Aquarius mission, to track ocean acidification in the Greater Caribbean, the Amazon Plume and the Bay of Bengal. New SPURS-2 Field Campaign Datasets Released (24-Oct-19). The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the availability of additional datasets from the NASA SPURS-2 field campaign. NASA-ESA Announce Collaborative Salinity Efforts (17-Oct-19). An international collaboration to develop a web-based evaluation and exploitation platform for satellite salinity was announced during the OceanObs'19 conference.
Recent Publications »
Grodsky, S.A., Reul, N., Vandemark, D., and Bentamy, A. (2020). Intramonth Oscillations of Atlantic ITCZ observed in SMAP Satellite Salinity Roman-Stork, H., Subrahmanyam, B., and Murty, V. (2020). The Role of Salinity in the Southeastern Arabian Sea in Determining Monsoon Onset and Strength Al-Hashmi, K., Piontkovski, S., Bruss, G., Hamza, W., Al-Junaibi, M.,Bryantseva, Y., and Popova, E. (2019). Seasonal Variations of Plankton Communities in Coastal Waters of Oman Ashin, K., Girishkumar, M.S., Suprit, K., and Thangaprakash, V.P. (2019). Observed Upper Ocean Seasonal and Intraseasonal Variability in the Andaman Sea Bahiyah, A., Wirasatriya, A., Marwoto, J., and Anugrah, D. A. (2019). Study of Seasonal Variation of Sea Surface Salinity in Java Sea and its Surrounding Seas using SMAP Satellite
