C. Gabarro

Spanish National Research Council | CSIC · Institute of Marine Sciences

The retrieval of sea ice thickness using L-band passive remote sensing requires robust models for emission from sea ice. In this work, measurements obtained from surface-based radiometers during the MOSAiC expedition are assessed with the Burke, Wilheit and SMRT radiative transfer models. These models encompass distinct methodologies: radiative tra...

Arctic SSS L3 v4 product by BEC

The hydrography of the Arctic Ocean has experienced profound changes over the last 2 decades. The sea ice extent has declined by more than 10 % per decade, and its liquid freshwater content has increased mainly due to glaciers and sea ice melting. Further, new satellite retrievals of sea surface salinity (SSS) in the Arctic might contribute to bett...

This study proposes a machine learning based methodology for estimating Arctic thin sea ice thickness (up to 1 m) from brightness temperature measurements of SMOS. The approach involves employing the so-called Burke model for sea ice emission modeling, integrating a suitable permittivity model and a radiative transfer equation. The training dataset...

Arctic sea ice is retreating, thinning, and exhibiting increased mobility. In the Beaufort Gyre (BG), liquid freshwater content (FWC) has increased by 40\% in the last two decades, with sea ice melting being a primary contributor. This study utilizes satellite observations of sea surface salinity (SSS) and sea ice concentration, along with model-ba...

The sea ice thickness retrieval using L-band passive remote sensing requires robust sea ice emission models. In this work, measurements from surface-based radiometers during MOSAiC are assessed with the Burke, Wilheit and SMRT models. These models encompass three distinct methodologies: incoherent without scattering, incoherent with scattering, and...

This study assesses the capability of surface quasi-geostrophic (SQG) approach to reconstruct the three-dimensional (3D) dynamics in a critical region of the Nordic Seas: the western coast of Svalbard, in the Fram Strait. Here, salty and warm Atlantic waters flow northward, entering the Arctic Ocean as the West Spitsbergen Current and feeding the A...

The hydrography of the Arctic Ocean has experienced profound changes over the last two decades. The sea-ice extent has declined more than 10 % per decade, and its liquid freshwater content has increased mainly due to glaciers and sea ice melting. Further, new satellite retrievals of Sea Surface Salinity in the Arctic might contribute to better char...

Leads play an important role in the exchange of heat, gases, vapour, and particles between seawater and the atmosphere in ice-covered polar oceans. In summer, these processes can be modified significantly by the formation of a meltwater layer at the surface, yet we know little about the dynamics of meltwater layer formation and persistence. During...

According to several studies, the liquid freshwater content (FWC) in the Beaufort Gyre has considerably increased over the last two decades. Variations in freshwater fluxes within the Arctic likely affect the global thermohaline circulation and have an impact on the global climate. However, the exact effect of the Arctic freshwater increase remains...

This study assesses the capability of Surface Quasi-Geostrophy (SQG) to reconstruct the three-dimensional (3D) dynamics in four critical areas of the Arctic Ocean: the Nordic, Barents, East Siberian, and Beaufort Seas. We first reconstruct the upper ocean dynamics from TOPAZ4 reanalysis of sea surface height (SSH), surface buoyancy (SSB), and surfa...

In the Arctic, the sea surface salinity (SSS) plays a key role in processes related to water mixing and sea ice. However, the lack of salinity observations causes large uncertainties in Arctic Ocean forecasts and reanalysis. Recently the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission was used by the Barcelona Expert Centre to develop an...

We present a comprehensive review of the current status of remotely sensed and in situ sea ice, ocean, and land parameters acquired over the Arctic and Antarctic and identify current data gaps through comparison with the portfolio of products provided by Copernicus services. While we include several land parameters, the focus of our review is on th...

Arctic sea ice is changing rapidly. Its retreat significantly impacts Arctic heat fluxes, ocean currents, and ecology, warranting the continuous monitoring and tracking of changes to sea ice extent and thickness. L-band (1.4 GHz) microwave radiometry can measure sea ice thickness for thin ice ≤1 m, depending on salinity and temperature. The sensiti...

The Vendée Globe is the world’s most famous solo, non-stop, unassisted sailing race. The Institute of Marine Sciences and the Barcelona Ocean Sailing Foundation installed a MicroCAT on the One Ocean One Planet boat. The skipper, Dídac Costa, completed the round trip in 97 days, from 8 November 2020 to 13 February 2021, providing one measurement of...

In the Arctic, the sea surface salinity (SSS) plays a key role in processes related to water mixing and sea ice. However, the lack of salinity observations causes large uncertainties in Arctic Ocean forecasts and reanalysis. Recently the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission was used by the Barcelona Expert Centre to propose an...

We have assessed the capability of Surface Quasi-Geostrophy (eSQG) to reconstruct the three-dimensional (3D) dynamics in two key areas of the Arctic Ocean: the Nordic and the Beaufort Seas. We reconstructed the upper ocean dynamics from sea surface height (SSH), surface buoyancy (SSB) and surface velocities and validated the results with the classi...

This paper presents the first Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) dedicated products over the Baltic Sea. The SSS retrieval from L-band brightness temperature (TB) measurements over this basin is really challenging due to important technical issues, such as the land–sea and ice–sea contamination, the high contaminatio...

Changes in the Earth’s water cycle can be estimated by analyzing sea surface salinity. This variable reflects the balance between precipitation and evaporation over the ocean, since the upper layers of the ocean are the most sensitive to atmosphere–ocean interactions. In situ measurements lack spatial and temporal synopticity and are typically acqu...

Year-round observations of the physical snow and ice properties and processes that govern the ice pack evolution and its interaction with the atmosphere and the ocean were conducted during the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition of the research vessel Polarstern in the Arctic Ocean from October...

During submission of the paper http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-307-2022 , an error was introduced in Fig. 6. The plots a and b were swapped.

Measuring salinity from space is challenging since the sensitivity of the brightness temperature (TB) to sea surface salinity (SSS) is low (about 0.5 K psu-1), while the SSS range in the open ocean is narrow (about 5 psu, if river discharge areas are not considered). This translates into a high accuracy requirement of the radiometer (about 2–3 K)....

This paper presents the first Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) dedicated products over the Baltic Sea. The SSS retrieval from L-band brightess temperature (TB) measurements over this basin is really challenging due to important technical issues, such as the land-sea and ice-sea contamination, the high contamination...

Measuring salinity from space is challenging since the sensitivity of the brightness temperature (TB) to sea surface salinity (SSS) is low (about 0.5 K / psu), while the SSS range in the open ocean is narrow (about 5 psu, if river discharge areas are not considered). This translates into a high accuracy requirement of the radiometer (about 2–3 K)....

The overall volume of freshwater entering the Arctic Ocean has been growing as glaciers melt and river runoff increases. Since 1980, a 20% increase in river runoff has been observed in the Arctic system. As the discharges of the Ob, Yenisei, and Lena rivers are an important source of freshwater in the Kara and Laptev Seas, an increase in river disc...

After more than 10 years in orbit, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) European mission is still a unique, high-quality instrument for providing soil moisture over land and sea surface salinity (SSS) over the oceans. At the Barcelona Expert Center (BEC), a new reprocessing of 9 years (2011–2019) of global SMOS SSS maps has been generated. T...

After more than 10 years in orbit, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) European mission is still a unique, highquality instrument for providing Soil Moisture over land and Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) over the oceans. At the Barcelona Expert Center (BEC), a new reprocessing of 9 years (2011–2019) of global SMOS SSS maps has been generated. Th...

DOWNLOAD DATA FROM http://dx.doi.org/10.20350/digitalCSIC/12620 This is the final version of the Arctic salinity data developed in the framework of the Arctic+ salinity project using SMOS data. Data acquisition Satellite: ESA SMOS mission (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity). Time coverage: 01 January 2011 - 31 December 2019. The distributed product...

This book celebrates the ten year anniversary of the Barcelona Expert Center by presenting recent contributions related to the topics on which the team has been working during those years. The Barcelona Expert Center’s expertise covers a wide variety of remote sensing fields, but the main focus of the research is on the SMOS data processing and its...

Hudson Bay (HB) is the largest semi-inland sea in the Northern Hemisphere, connecting with the Arctic Ocean through the Foxe Basin and the northern Atlantic Ocean through the Hudson Strait. HB is covered by ice and snow in winter, which completely melts in summer. For about six months each year, satellite remote sensing of sea surface salinity (SSS...

The warming of the Arctic air during summer is an increasingly frequent phenomenon. With surface air temperature exceeding more than 10ºC the mean of the last 40 years, and weekly average temperature values close to this peak value, the melt runoff in Greenland has dramatically increased. This phenomenon has reached its maximum expression in 2012 a...

The European Space Agency (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) missions are providing brightness temperature measurements at 1.4 GHz (L-band) for about 10 and 4 years respectively. One of the new areas of geophysical exploitation of L-band radi...

The quality of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) sea surface salinity (SSS) measurements has been noticeably improved in the past years. However, for some applications, there are still some limitations in the use of the Level-2 ocean salinity product. First, the SSS measurements are still affected by a latitudinal and seasonal bias. Secon...

The Arctic Ocean contains only a 1% of the world's ocean water, but the rivers that flow out into it account for the 10% of the volume world's rivers freshwater. The upper layer of fresher water facilitates the creation of sea ice and plays an important role in the position of the jet stream and storms over the northern hemisphere [ISBN, 978-82-797...

A preliminary version of the Arctic salinity data developed in the framework of the Arctic+ salinity project using SMOS data. Data acquisition Satellite: ESA SMOS mission (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity). Time coverage: 01 January, 2011 - 31 August, 2019. Time resolution: 9 days. Maps frequency generation: Daily. Spatial coverage: Latitude range:...

SPRINT presentation was a 4 minutes presentation previous to poster exhibition. IGARSS 2019

Despite representing only the 1% of the total ocean’s water, the discharge by Arctic rivers accounts for about the 11% of the freshwater flow into the ocean. This huge volume of low density freshwater restricts the mixing between surface and deep ocean layers, because of the induced strong stratification. The accumulation of low salinity water on t...

Arctic sea ice is going through a dramatic change in its extent and volume at an unprecedented rate. Sea-ice thickness (SIT) is a controlling geophysical variable that needs to be understood with greater accuracy. For the first time, a SIT-retrieval method that exclusively uses only airborne SIT data for training the empirical algorithm to retrieve...

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [...]

After more than eight years of the European Space Agency (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) acquisitions, an exhaustive, empirical characterization of the biases and uncertainties affecting SMOS brightness temperatures over the ocean is possible. We show that both parameters strongly depend not only on the position in the field of view,...

We introduce the OSI-450, the SICCI-25km and the SICCI-50km climate data records of gridded global sea-ice concentration. These three records are derived from passive microwave satellite data and offer three distinct advantages compared to existing records: first, all three records provide quantitative information on uncertainty and possibly applie...

In addition to their ecological and environmental value, coastal areas are of major economic and social importance. Therefore, they are one of the marine environments most affected by anthropogenic pressures, in the form of high population densities and intense human activities. Anthropogenic pressures produce an excess of nutrients which are deliv...

This paper aims to present and assess the quality of seven years (2011–2017) of 25 km nine-day Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) objectively analyzed maps in the Arctic and sub-Arctic oceans ( 50 ∘ N– 90 ∘ N). The SMOS SSS maps presented in this work are an improved version of the preliminary three-year dataset gene...

We introduce the OSI-450, the SICCI-25km and the SICCI-50km climate data records of gridded global sea-ice concentration. These three records are derived from passive microwave satellite data and offer three distinct advantages compared to existing records: First, all three records provide quantitative information on uncertainty and possibly applie...

The GNSS Transpolar Earth Reflectometry exploriNg system (G-TERN) was proposed in response to ESA’s Earth Explorer 9 Revised Call by a team of 33 multi-disciplinary scientists. The primary objective of the mission is to quantify at high spatio-temporal resolution crucial characteristics, processes and interactions between sea ice and other Earth sy...

Monitoring sea ice concentration is required for operational and climate studies in the Arctic Sea. Technologies used so far for estimating sea ice concentration have some limitations, for instance the impact of the atmosphere, the physical temperature of ice, and the presence of snow and melting. In the last years, L-band radiometry has been succe...

This work presents a novel method to determine Arctic Sea ice concentration with radiometric measurements obtained by ESA SMOS satellite, that was launched on 2009. This satellite carries a passive radiometer working at low microwave frequency, 1.4GHz (L-band), which presents some advantages with respect higher frequency radiometers. A Maximum Like...

We present a new method to estimate sea ice concentration in the Arctic Ocean using brightness temperature observations from the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) interferometric satellite. The method, which employs a Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE), exploits the marked difference in radiative properties between sea ice and seawater, in partic...

This article summarizes some of the activities in which Jordi Font, research professor and head of the Department of Physical and Technological Oceanography, Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC, Spanish National Research Council) in Barcelona, has been involved as co-Principal Investigator for Ocean Salinity of the European Space Agency Soil Moistur...

Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) is the first satellite mission capable of measuring sea surface salinity and soil moisture from space. Its novel instrument (the L-band radiometer MIRAS) has required the development of new algorithms to process SMOS data, a challenging task due to many processing issues and the difficulties inherent in a new...

New ocean products from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission are being developed at the Barcelona Expert Centre. Besides the already operational 9-day and monthly sea surface salinity (SSS) products, two additional daily SSS products have been recently become operational: a simple user-friendly product containing all swath-based Leve...

Salinity and temperature gradients drive the thermohaline circulation of the oceans, and play a key role in the ocean-atmosphere coupling. The strong and direct interactions between the ocean and the cryosphere (primarily through sea ice and ice shelves) is also a key ingredient of the thermohaline circulation. The ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Sal...

A simplified parallel version of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Level 2 Ocean Salinity (L2OS) processor is used to assess the optimal configuration of both the SMOS cost function and the corresponding minimization scheme for sea surface salinity (SSS) and wind speed (U10) retrievals. For such a purpose, both realistically simulated bri...

The local oscillators (LOs) of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission payload are used to shift the operating frequency of the 72 receivers to an optimal intermediate frequency needed for the signal processing. The LO temperature variations produce phase errors in the visibility, which result in a blurring of the reconstructed brightness temp...

More than three years have passed since the launch, on November 2, 2009, of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite carrying a microwave synthetic aperture radiometer working at 1.4 GHz. The aim of the mission is to provide Sea Surface Salinity and Soil Moisture observations, with a spatial resolution of...

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission is one of the European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Explorer Opportunity Missions, which was proposed in 1998 within the ESA Living Planet Program. It was launched in November 2009 with the purpose to provide global maps of both soil moisture (SM) and sea surface salinity (SSS) with both spatial and t...