The contribution of the Barcelona World Race to improved ocean surface information. A validation of the SMOS remotely sensed salinity

Abstract

The oceans not only cover about three quarters of the Earth’s surface but they also constitute the most relevant climate driver. However, our present knowledge about the oceans is by no means comparable to that of terrestrial or atmospheric systems. Salinity and temperature are key parameters to understand the dynamics of the oceans; but a global network of observations is lacking in spite of valuable data on the oceans that are being accumulated through oceanographic campaigns and by using automated devices, fixed moorings, drifting instrumented buoys, and ships of opportunity. In addition, during the last 40 years, remotely sensed data from satellites have offered almost synoptic information describing the Earth’s surface. This information includes sea surface temperature, which has been routinely monitored; by contrast, ocean surface salinity was not remotely measured until very recently. The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite, launched in November 2009, has been the first attempt to obtain remotely sensed surface salinity data. In this context, the Barcelona World Race has provided new opportunities not only to obtain a worldwide sequence of sea surface temperature and salinity data, through one of the participating ships, but also to validate the first salinity data obtained by the SMOS.

Keywords: sea surface temperature and salinity · ocean circumnavigation · ocean races · ships of opportunity · SMOS