Sea Surface Salinity Remote Sensingat IFREMER / CERSAT About the Cersat Salinity CenterThe Cersat Salinity Center is a research group including members of the Laboratoire d'Océanographie Spatiale at the French Institute of Research for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) and of the Brest/Radar division of the french company Collect Localisation Satellite. Our activities are focused on the challenge of Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) Remote Sensing from space.
In particular, our team is strongly involved in the scientific algorithm development and data exploitation of the ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission. Our group thus work as one of the Expert Support Laboratory for ESA level 2 ocean salinity products. This activity is conducted in close collaboration with the french LOCEAN/IPSL and spanish ICM-CSIC laboratories, as well as with the UK/ARGANS company which is in charge of the prototype processor development and maintenance.Our research activities on SMOS data also includes providing some feedback to the SMOS Level 1 image reconstruction processing (calibration, quality validation). In addition, Ifremer/cersat hosts the Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS (CATDS), which is the french ground segment for the SMOS Level 3 and 4 data, developped in collaboration with CNES and the CESBIO laboratory. In this context, our team is in charge of the CATDS Salinity Expertise center (C-ECOS). This center is piloted and developed in collaboration with several national partners, in particular with our collegues from LOCEAN/IPSL and LEGOS laboratories. In this context, the prototype Level 3 and 4 algorithms that are tested in the C-ECOS and found to produce the best SSS products will then be turned into operational processing chains by the french companies CAP-GEMINI and ACRI-ST. Finally, we are also contributing to the preparation of the NASA Aquarius/SAC-D satellite mission. Aquarius is another focused satellite mission to measure global Sea Surface Salinity that will be launch in 2011. By providing feedback results from SMOS mission, we thus support the scientific algorithm development of the mission and we prepare the synergies between SMOS and Aquarius data in close collaboration with our US collegues. In particular, we work with some science team members of Aquarius mission. from University of New Hampshire.
More generally, we are using multiple sensor & associated data sets (low frequency microwave radiometers, ocean color, sea surface temperature, wind, wave, altimeter products, model and in situ data..) to develop new scientific algorithms, synergetic data methodologies and computing techniques that tentatively best map salinity at the surface of the oceans. The principal scientific objective is to make global SSS measurements over the ice-free oceans with 150-km spatial resolution, and to achieve a measurement error less than 0.2 (PSS-78 [practical salinity scale of 1978]) on a 30-day time scale, taking into account all sensors and geophysical random errors and biases. Salinity is indeed a key indicator of the strength of the hydrologic cycle because it tracks the differences created by varying evaporation and precipitation, runoff, and ice processes. These variables lead to important dynamical consequences for oceanic currents and mixing that influence the ocean’s capacity to absorb, transport, and store heat, freshwater, and carbon dioxide. Many of the processes governing the role of salinity in the modulation of upper-ocean mixing in both tropical and high-latitude regions are neither well understood nor adequately represented in climate models.
Our research activity is thus part of a national and international effort to provide the scientific community with new data sets usefull for ocean circulation modeling, climate studies, bio-optics and bio-chemistry of the ocean.
     About Cersat
The Center for Satellite Exploitation and Research (CERSAT) is one of the major world data centers for oceanography. It processes, archives and distributes a large amount of data products obtained from satellite remote-sensing, mostly intended to support research activity in various fields (oceanography, meteorology, climatology,...) and operational applications based on space data (weather prediction, ocean circulation, environment monitoring,...). The CERSAT is a department of the French Institute of Research for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer), located in Brest (France). It is funded through various projects and contracts by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Community. It is also linked to many organizations and institutes, such as the Centre National d'Etude Spatiale (CNES),Meteo-France or the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC), through several agreements and partnerships. The CERSAT consists of both data management and research teams, interacting closely to provide new advances in ocean remote-sensing, knowledge and information systems, and improved support to users and applications. CERSAT 
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