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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-1828</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Sea surface salinity downscaling using deep generative diffusion models</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Forestier</surname>
<given-names>Enzo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ollier</surname>
<given-names>Luther</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>El Hourany</surname>
<given-names>Roy</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6454-1645</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Boutin</surname>
<given-names>Jacqueline</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2845-4912</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mejia</surname>
<given-names>Carlos</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8996-7546</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Thiria</surname>
<given-names>Sylvie</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Laboratoire d’Océanographie et du Climat: Expérimentations et Approches Numériques (LOCEAN), UMR 7159, Sorbonne Université/CNRS/IRD/Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN), 4 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Laboratoire d’Océanologie et de Géosciences (LOG), UMR 8187, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale (ULCO)/Université de Lille/CNRS, Wimereux, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>14</day>
<month>04</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>25</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Enzo Forestier et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1828/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1828/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1828/egusphere-2026-1828.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1828/egusphere-2026-1828.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>High-resolution satellite observations are essential for studying fine-scale ocean processes. We investigate diffusion models, a class of deep generative models, for improving the resolution of sea surface salinity (SSS) from coarse inputs and for reconstruction under noisy and incomplete observations. We train an unconditional prior on 1/12&amp;deg; reanalysis fields and condition the model at inference time on coarse SSS (1/3&amp;deg;) together with high-resolution (1/12&amp;deg;) sea surface temperature (SST) and sea surface height (SSH) as auxiliary variables. Conditioning is performed via a pseudo-inverse guidance approach, which steers sampling toward solutions that are both statistically consistent with the learned prior and compatible with the observations. We also introduce a simple gradient-enhancement procedure applied during inference to increase contrast while maintaining consistency with the conditioning constraints. Experiments in the Gulf Stream region compare models conditioned on SST only, on SSH only, and on both variables. Validation over the year 2020 uses root-mean-square error (RMSE), structural similarity (SSIM), gradient distributions, and temporal Fourier spectra. Conditioning on SST substantially improves accuracy relative to SSH alone; combining SST and SSH yields further gains and slightly outperforms a convolutional baseline. The gradient-enhanced sampler restores sharper fronts and increased weekly-daily variance at a small cost in pixel-wise scores. Overall, the results show that guided diffusion models can downscale SSS while recovering fine-scale structure, with SST providing the dominant small-scale constraint and SSH adding complementary mesoscale context. The framework is designed to extend naturally to satellite SSS products and future higher-resolution missions.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Agence Nationale de la Recherche</funding-source>
<award-id>ANR-22-CPJ1-0003-01</award-id>
<award-id>ANR-21-EXES-0011</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales</funding-source>
<award-id>Salinity Understanding through Integrated Models and Observations, 2025-2027</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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