Why am I doing a blog about ocean salinity and not about fishes or some other marine features that you might think that are fantastic? Well, take a look around looking for blogs about marine topics. I bet you will find a large number of blogs about whales, dolphins, sharks or whatever, really… but now do the same searching for ocean salinity. For sure that now the results coming up to your screen are really scarce and limited.
That is exactly what is happening with measurements concerning the sea surface salinity (SSS) of our oceans. Salinity along with temperature rules the ocean circulation trough what in oceanography is known as the Thermohaline circulation. This incredible ocean highway is known to be closely linked to our climate moving heat from low to high latitudes and vice versa. Without this heat transport some climate models predict that northern countries would experience lower temperatures than what they have at the moment.
Regardless its importance, salinity measurements are spatially and time limited. In order to improve our understanding of the current climate change and its possible consequences, it is essential that oceanographers pay attention to this matter. For this reason the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA launched two titanic missions to measure SSS from space. The names of these missions are SMOS and Aquarius respectively and I personally think that they will mean a revolution of our understanding of the ocean dynamics and its role regulating the global climate.
This is the way how this blog is coming to alive. Thanks to the initiation of 23things blogging sessions, which I am currently attending, I decided to create this space where you will find a post every second week related to my findings with the SSS. In the same way you will be able to post your comments, concerns and thoughts about this topic and let’s see what else we create in here. I wish we enjoy and to set off this blog I am posting a picture of SMOS and Aquarius. If you want to know more about the missions you might want to check the following links. Yes, I agree, they are quite messi but if you persist you will find the information.
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/The_Living_Planet_Programme/Earth_Explorers/SMOS/Overview3 Good enough to get general information from SMOS mission
http://www.cesbio.ups-tlse.fr/SMOS_blog/ This a good link if you are looking for the last news of SMOS or to learn how to get data.
http://aquarius.nasa.gov/ Very compact website where you can find all what you need to learn about Aquarius. So all in one, mission and data information.
