Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity on Rotating Globes 2012

  • Released Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:52PM
  • ID: 4046

The Aquarius spacecraft is designed to measure global sea surface salinity. It is important to understand salinity, the amount of dissolved salts in water, because it will lead us to better understanding of the water cycle and can lead to improved climate models. Aquarius is a collaboration between NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina

This visualization celebrates over a year of successful Aquarius observations. Sea surface salinity in the northern hemisphere is shown as the globe slowly rotates. The data cycles through a single year, 2012, and repeats. Two versions of the visualization are provied: a version with dates and a scientific color bar and another version without dates and a simpler color bar. The range of time shown is December 2011 through Decemeber 2012. The data continuously loops through this range every 6 seconds. This visualization was generated based on version 2.0 of the Aquarius data products with all 3 scanning beams.
http://The Aquarius spacecraft

Aquarius spinning globe without dates and with public colorbar.

Aquarius spinning globe with dates and with science colorbar

Print resolution still of the Atlantic Ocean.

Print resolution still of the Atlantic Ocean.

Print resolution still showing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Print resolution still showing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Print resolution still of the Eastern Pacific.

Print resolution still of the Eastern Pacific.

Print resolution still of the Western Pacific Ocean.

Print resolution still of the Western Pacific Ocean.

Print resolution still of oceans around Africa.

Print resolution still of oceans around Africa.

Aquarius color bar intended for the public. The salinity range is low to high, going from blue to green to red.

Aquarius color bar intended for the public. The salinity range is low to high, going from blue to green to red.

Aquarius color bar intended for scientists. The salinity range is 30 to 40 PSU, going from blue to green to red.

Aquarius color bar intended for scientists. The salinity range is 30 to 40 PSU, going from blue to green to red.

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aquarius/news/data-first-year.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Datasets used in this visualization

Aquarius SSS (A.K.A. Sea Surface Salinity) (Collected with the Microwave Radiometer sensor)
Observed Data NASA 12-2011 through 12-2012
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