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Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity Flat Maps 2012
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- Visualizations by:
- Greg Shirah
- View full credits
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 is shown on a flat map using a simple cartesian and extended Molleide projections. Versions are included with and without dates/color bars.
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.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
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Scientists
- Gary Lagerloef (ESR)
- Gene Feldman (NASA/GSFC)
- Norman Kuring (NASA/GSFC)
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Producer
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
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)
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related pages
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ID: 4238 Visualization
Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity 2011-2014 - Hyperwall
Read moreRectangular flat map projection (Atlantic-centered) with grid lines showing Sea Surface Salinity measurements taken by Aquarius between September 2011 and September 2014. || There are other versions of this hyperwall show found in #4233. There is another version of this visualization on a globe in #4234.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 ArgentinaThis visualization celebrates over three years of successful Aquarius observations. Sea surface salinity is shown on a spinning globe (with and without grid lines).The range of time shown is September 2011 through September 2014. This visualization was generated based on version 3.0 of the Aquarius data products. ||
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ID: 4233 Visualization
Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity 2011-2014 - Flat Maps
Read moreRectangular flat map projection (Atlantic-centered) with grid lines showing Sea Surface Salinity measurements taken by Aquarius between September 2011 and September 2014. || 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 ArgentinaThis visualization celebrates over three years of successful Aquarius observations. Sea surface salinity is shown on a flat map using simple cartesian and extended Molleide projections. Versions are included with and without grid lines, and in both Altantic-centered and Pacific-centered projections.The range of time shown is September 2011 through September 2014. This visualization was generated based on version 3.0 of the Aquarius data products. ||
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ID: 4234 Visualization
Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity 2011-2014 - Rotating Globes
Read more3 years of sea surface salinity data displayed on a spinning globe focused on the northern hemisphere with date and color bar || 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 ArgentinaThis visualization celebrates over three years of successful Aquarius observations. Sea surface salinity is shown on a spinning globe (with and without grid lines).The range of time shown is September 2011 through September 2014. This visualization was generated based on version 3.0 of the Aquarius data products. ||
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ID: 11193 Produced Video
Salty Motion
Read moreThe saltiness of the sea surface varies depending on where and when you're looking. Heavy rainfall, river outflows, ocean currents, sea ice melt, evaporation and other seasonal phenomena can all alter salinity—and scientists can now see these changes in clear detail. NASA's Aquarius mission has collected the agency's first full year of satellite ocean surface salinity measurements, revealing a colorful and dynamic portrait of our salty seas. Salinity shifts, a powerful driver of global ocean currents, are also a fingerprint of variations in Earth's fresh water cycle, providing valuable information on how a changing climate is altering global rainfall patterns. Before Aquarius, researchers had only snapshots of the ocean's salt content variations. With global satellite measurements, they will now be able to see how salinity changes over time. Watch the video to learn more about our ocean's salty motions. ||
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ID: 4045 Visualization
Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity Tour 2012
Read moreThe 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 ArgentinaThis visualization celebrates over a year of successful Aquarius observations. Sea surface salinity is shown at various locations around the globe highlighting the following:the Atlantic Ocean is generally much more salty than the Pacificlow salinity waters in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific are transported westwardhigh influxes of fresh water from the Amazon River basin can be clearly seenlow salinity waters are transported by the Labrador current to the southhigh influxes of fresh water from the Ganges River basin can be seen keeping the Eastern Indian Ocean lower salinity than the Western Indian OceanThe 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. ||
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ID: 4046 Visualization
Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity on Rotating Globes 2012
Read moreThe 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 ArgentinaThis 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 ||
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ID: 5017 Visualization
A Decade of Sea Surface Salinity
Read moreThis data visualization shows sea surface salinity (i.e., ocean salt concentration) over a ten year period (2011 to 2021). Warm colors (orange to yellow) are areas of high salinity/hot tropics. Cooler colors (blue to violet) are fresher waters, many of which can be seen coming from rainy/river/wetter tropics. ||
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