Spatial Scales of Sea Surface Salinity Subfootprint Variability in the
SPURS Regions
Abstract
Subfootprint variability (SFV), or representativeness error, is
variability within the footprint of a satellite that can impact
validation done by comparison of in situ and remote sensing data. This
study seeks to determine the size of the SFV as a function of footprint
size in two regions that were heavily sampled with in situ data. The
SPURS-1 (Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Studies)
experiment was conducted in the subtropical North Atlantic in 2012-2013,
whereas the SPURS-2 study was in the tropical eastern North Pacific in
2016-2017. SFV was also computed using a high-resolution regional model
based on ROMS (Regional Ocean Modeling System). We computed SFV at
footprint sizes ranging from 20-100 km for both regions. SFV is strongly
seasonal, but for different reasons in the two regions. In the SPURS-1
region, the meso- and submesoscale variability seemed to control the
size of the SFV. In the SPURS-2 region, the SFV is much larger than
SPURS-1 and controlled by patchy rainfall.