28 February 2013
The Oceans Like You Have Never Seen Them Before
Posted by Dan Satterfield
Here is what NASA had to say about this video-
This video provides a global tour of sea surface salinity using measurements taken by NASA’s Aquarius instrument aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft, from December 2011 through December 2012. Red represents areas of high salinity, while blue represents areas of low salinity. Aquarius is a focused effort to measure sea surface salinity and will provide the global view of salinity variability needed for climate studies. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales).
Hat tip to my friend Joe Witte at NASA Goddard for this.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
Daniel J. Andrews said on 1 March 2013
I found it rather surprising how far the Amazon freshwater plume travels. It also appears to pulse so that’s probably the impact from the rainy season, I imagine. Pretty cool.
Dan Satterfield said on 1 March 2013
I agree!
Doug Cullen said on 13 March 2013
Great Video.
I actually think that the pulse of fresh water moving eastward from the Amazon is probably a Kelvin wave propagating along the equatorial counter-current.
This really demonstrates the power of video when trying to understand Earth processes. It is much easier to understand that these are dynamic when you can watch them change.