Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) is a key indicator of the freshwater fluxes and an important variable to understand the changes the Arctic is facing. However, salinity in-situ measurements are very sparse in the Arctic region. For this reason, remote sensing salinity measurements (currently provided by L-band radiometry satellites, SMOS and SMAP) are of special relevance for this region. The retrieval of SSS in the Arctic represents a challenge, because brightness temperatures measured by L-band satellites are less sensitive to salinity in cold waters. An additional drawback consists in the presence of sea ice, that contaminates the brightness temperature and must be adequately processed. The ESA Arctic+ Salinity project (Dec 2018 – June 2020) will contribute to reduce the knowledge gap in the characterization of the freshwater flux changes in the Arctic region.

Quantitative multi-scale (temporal and spatial) understanding of sea ice, ocean and atmosphere interactive processes and their mutual feedback, focusing on four Arctic Scientific research Challenges- Arctic Amplification, open water on sea ice dynamics, impact of extreme event storms in sea-ice formation, Artcic ocean spin up

Exploitation of CryoSat 2 data over the open and coastal ocean

Arctic sea surface salinity retrieved from SMOS, spatial resolution 0.25 deg (EASE grid 2.0), temporal resolution 9-day maps generated daily. The product contains the following data: i) sea surface salinity (p.s.u), ii) sea surface salinity uncertainty (p.s.u), and iii) sea surface salinity anomaly (p.s.u): difference between sea surface salinity provided by SSS field and the annual sea surface salinity provided by WOA 2018 A5B7. Product version 3.1. The product will be freely distributed at the BEC webpage http://bec.icm.csic.es and at the project webpage https://arcticsalinity.argans.co.uk.

Satellite LRM, SAR, SARIN polar altimeter product generated from Cryosat data by DTU Space

Arctide2017 is a high-resolution tidal atlas of the Arctic Ocean. Developed by NOVELTIS, DTU Space and LEGOS, it combines altimeter data from ESA's Envisat and CryoSat satellites into the most complete dataset used in the Arctic region to estimate tidal information

Generated by inverting DTU15 Gravity field (generated from Cryosat Data) and combining with existing bathymetries

Estimates of these four freshwater fluxes: discharge from rivers; inflow through ice and melt run off; outflow of freshwater in sea ice; and in/outflow of freshwater through ocean currents.