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https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-660
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-660
20 Jul 2022
 | 20 Jul 2022

Assimilation of sea surface salinities from SMOS in an Arctic coupled ocean and sea ice reanalysis

Jiping Xie, Roshin P. Raj, Laurent Bertino, Justino Martínez, Carolina Gabarró, and Rafael Catany

Abstract. 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 Arctic SSS product.

In this study, we evaluate the impact of assimilating this data in a coupled ocean-ice data assimilation system. Using the Ensemble Kalman filter from July to December 2016, two assimilation runs assimilated two successive versions of the SMOS SSS product, on top of a pre-existing reanalysis run. The runs were validated against independent in situ salinity profiles in the Arctic. The results show that the biases and the Root Mean Squared Differences (RMSD) of SSS are reduced by 10 % to 50 % depending on areas and put the latest product to its advantage. The time series of Freshwater Content (FWC) further show that its seasonal cycle can be adjusted by assimilation of the SSS products, which is encouraging for its use in a long-time reanalysis to monitor the Arctic water cycle.

Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this preprint. The responsibility to include appropriate place names lies with the authors.
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Journal article(s) based on this preprint

09 Mar 2023
Assimilation of sea surface salinities from SMOS in an Arctic coupled ocean and sea ice reanalysis
Jiping Xie, Roshin P. Raj, Laurent Bertino, Justino Martínez, Carolina Gabarró, and Rafael Catany
Ocean Sci., 19, 269–287, https://doi.org/10.5194/os-19-269-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/os-19-269-2023, 2023
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.

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Sea ice melt together with other freshwater sources have effects on the Arctic environment. The...
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