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Since the mid-1980s, physical oceanographers at the Institute of Marine Sciences have been involved in the use of Lagrangian drifters as a complementary technology for their oceanographic research. As Lagrangian observations became more feasible, these researchers continued developing their own drifters in what was to be the seed of current technological activities at the Physical and Technological Oceanography Department. In this paper we overview the work done during the last 30 years with special focus on Lagrangian developments from the initial activities to the latest developments. In addition to basic oceanography research applications, Lagrangian technological developments include prototypes for measuring surface and subsurface ocean properties, for tracking purposes in search and rescue operations and pollution events, and for monitoring ice motion and thickness in the Arctic. The paper emphasizes original and unpublished technical aspects related to the latest developments., Desde mediados de la década de los 80, los oceanógrafos físicos en el Instituto de Ciencias del Mar se involucraron en el uso de boyas Lagrangianas como una tecnología complementaria para su investigación oceanográfica. A medida que las observaciones Lagrangianas se volvieron más factibles, los investigadores continuaron desarrollando sus propios flotadores en lo que se convirtió en la semilla de las actuales actividades tecnológicas llevadas a cabo en el Departamento de Oceanografía Física y Tecnológica. En este artículo se presenta una visión general del trabajo realizado durante los últimos 30 años, con especial énfasis en el uso de flotadores a la deriva y desarrollos propios desde su inicio hasta las aplicaciones más recientes. Además de estudios básicos de investigación oceanográfica, los desarrollos tecnológicos llevados a cabo incluyen prototipos para medir las propiedades superficiales y sub-superficiales, para tareas de seguimiento en operaciones de búsqueda y rescate y eventos de contaminación marina o para monitorizar el grosor de la capa de hielo y su movimiento en el Ártico. En este trabajo se hace hincapié en aspectos técnicos originales e inéditos relacionados con los últimos desarrollos.

The SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) satellite was successfully launched in November 2009. This ESA led mission for Earth Observation is dedicated to provide soil moisture over continental surface (with an accuracy goal of 0.04 m3/m3) vegetation water content over land and ocean salinity. These geophysical features are important as they control the energy balance between the surface and the atmosphere. Their knowledge at a global scale is of interest for climatic and weather researches in particular in improving models forecasts. The SMOS instrument measures the passive microwave emission of the Earth surface at a frequency of 1,4 GHz (L-band). The instrument is an interferometer and provides brightness temperatures with an average resolution of 40 km, at several angles and dual polarizations. Data are acquired at two times in a day at 6 am and 18 pm (local time) and insure a complete coverage of the Earth surface in 3 days with a sampling of 15 km. The main products of the mission are of course Soil Moisture and Sea Surface salinity, but also vegetation opacity (directly related to water content) of vegetation covers including forests, surface dielectric constant for level two but also brightness temperatures at the surface, strong winds, root zone soil moisture and RFI (radio frequency interferences) maps. From Level 2 SMOS data several groups have started making new products several of them being either operational or on the verge of being such. We will show some of them or refer to related presentations. They include freeze defreeze (FMI), thin sea ice (Klimat Center Hamburg), near real time brightness temperatures and soon soil moisture (ECMWF), root zone soil moisture and drought indices (USDA and CESBIO). We are also working on more elaborate products such as water fractions, flood risk indices, improved precipitation with use of assimilated SMOS data, etc. The focus in this presentation will be given to the latter new science products. The purpose of this communication is to present the mission results after almost 6 years in orbit and a major re-processing as well as some outstanding results already obtained. A special attention will be devoted to level 2 products and to the retrieval quality improvements from version 3 (at launch) to the current version 620.

International audience

This paper focuses on the forecast of the hourly water demand data of distinct pressure floors of the Barcelona water transport network. Several methods to forecast the hourly water demand are studied and compared with the aim of being applied for the operational control of the Barcelona water transport network. The short-term forecast of the intraday series has a main feature: the double periodicity (daily and hourly). To address this issue several extensions of the classical time-series forecasting methods are proposed: seasonal ARIMA, structural models and the exponential methods without external information. The paper focuses on the daily and hourly forecasts. In the hourly forecast, the exponential smoothing method is the most accurate. On the hand, the seasonal ARIMA and the exponential smoothing are similar in the daily time scale.

Eurisy - Aplicaciones satelitales para la gestión multinivel de riego: capitalización de experiencias para impulsar la innovación regional, 31 October 2013, Badajoz, Spain

13th URSI Commission F Triennial Open Symposium, on Radiowave Propagation & Remote Sensing, April 30 - May 3, 2013, Ottawa, Canada, The SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) objectives for sea surface salinity (SSS) are to provide global coverage with repetition rate and accuracy adequate for oceanographic, climatological and hydrological studies. To this end the mission requirements were set to determine SSS values with an accuracy of 0.1, in boxes of 100-200 km and temporal averages of 10-30 days [1]. The SMOS frequency, 1413 MHz within the microwave L-band, has been chosen as a tradeoff between sensitivity of brightness temperature (TB) to salinity variations, spatial resolution, influence of ionosphere and because it is assumed to be a protected band. The sensitivity of Tb to salinity is much smaller than the one for soil moisture, on the order of 0.5K per salinity unit. This implies that the SSS retrieval by SMOS requires a high performance of the MIRAS interferometric radiometer, the single payload on board [2]. The ESA SMOS Ocean Salinity Level 2 (L2OS) Processor has been designed from 2004 by the team that co-authors this abstract, and is being now improved to increase its performance. It relies on a minimisation of the comparison between the TB at different incidence angles measured by SMOS when overflying a single ocean spot, and a modeling of the sea surface L-band emission that takes into account the actual environmental conditions and all the processes that impact or modify this emission [3]. In this paper we present the status of the L2 ocean products as they are operationally generated by mid 2013, more than three years after the mission being in operations phase. A detailed analysis of the SSS fields retrieved by SMOS, and comparison to other data sources like the Argo array of profiling floats, evidences that the mission requirements are almost reached in some regions [5, 6], while in others the results are degraded either due to geographical unfavourable conditions (lower TB sensitivity in cold waters, difficult roughness correction under high winds, difficult galactic signal scattering modelling under high galactic signal, impact of land or RFI contamination). In rainy regions, systematic low biases are observed possibly linked to vertical stratification of salinity between L-band skin depth (1cm) and ARGO measurement (~5m) [6]

SMOS & Aquarius Science Workshop, 15-17 April 2013, Brest, France, A comprehensive quality control of the SMOS Level 2 data is essential for a successful retrieval of sea surface salinity (SSS) maps. In particular, a poor filtering at Level 2 (L2) will in turn negatively impact the quality of the spatio-temporally averaged SSS maps (i.e., Level 3 or L3 maps). On the other hand, overfiltering (i.e., having a high false alarm rate) will substantially reduce the number of SSS data available for averaging at L3, thus increasing the noise level of L3 SSS maps. In this study, the impact of the different quality flags provided in the operational SMOS L2 User Data Product (UDP) in the quality of the SSS retrievals is assessed. SMOS data has been filtered following several combinations of flags. The flags can be grouped in geophysical filters (filters related to geophysical conditions prevailing in a given area), retrieval filters (filters related to the reliability of the SSS retrieval method) and geometrical filters (filters related to the geometry of the snapshots taken by SMOS). Filtered data in such a way, have been compared with ARGO buoys data, both at L2 (i.e., at swath grid level) and L3. On the other hand, the distribution of the SSS Bayesian-based inversion residuals (which indicate the consistency of the measured brightness temperatures (TBs), the forward model, and some a priori or background information) have also been analysed. These residuals, from a theoretical point of view, should follow a chi square distribution. The L2 products provide two quality flags that are based on the theoretical distribution of the residual. However, since measurement errors are not Gaussian nor uncorrelated, the real residual distributions are not always close to the theoretical one and, as such, the residual theoretically-based flags/thresholds become less effective. Moreover, the theoretical chi square distribution depends on the degrees of freedom of the problem. In the case of a SMOS grid point, the degrees of freedom correspond to the number of valid measurements used for retrieving SSS plus the (relatively small) number of geophysical parameters present in the inversion a priori or background term (typically SSS, sea surface wind speed, sea surface temperature, and total electronic content) in every point. The number of measurements used in the computation of salinity changes for each grid point (depends on the position on the Field Of View). However, one of the quality flags provided by L2 UDP and related with the chi square distribution of the residual, assumes that the number of measurements (i.e. the degrees of freedom of the theoretical distribution) is constant. This produces an inconsistency in the quality control of the SMOS data. A new filtering approach consists of adjusting the real distribution of residuals to the desired chi square distribution. This filter is based on geometric assumptions about the number of retrieved measures across swath. Alternatively, one can estimate the shape of the distribution of residuals as a function of the degrees of freedom and empirically set a threshold value for each distribution or for each interval of degrees of freedom (when the distribution of residuals does not vary significantly over a specific interval). Preliminary results of these two new approaches will be presented at the conference

SMOS & Aquarius Science Workshop, 15-17 April 2013, Brest, France, Measurements of upper ocean in-situ salinity were conducted during the STRASSE and MIDAS campaigns, which are contributions to the SPURS salinity experiment. Both of these cruises were conducted in the Sub-Tropical North Atlantic in a strong evaporative region. We deployed the Air-Sea Interaction Profiler (ASIP) which has the capability to acquire data from below the mixed layer to the air-sea interface. Here we present an overview of the results from these field experiments in the context of sea surface salinity

SMOS & Aquarius Science Workshop, 15-17 April 2013, Brest, France, In this talk, we shall present an overview of the SMOS mission status regarding oceanic observations. The young SSS remote sensing experience from Space will be first discussed in light of the now more than 50-years old ocean satellite observations of sea surface temperature, sea level and ocean color. After 3 years of acquisitions and continous improvements, SMOS SSS data still present some well identified flaws (spatio-temporal drifts, biases, uncertainties) associated with either calibration issues, image reconstruction processing unknowns, brightness temperature forward modelling issues (corrections of sea surface roughness, extra-terrestial sources) or radio frequency interference contaminations. Some of these problems are purely-SMOS related issues (e.g. interferometric concept) and some are common to both SMOS and Aquarius missions (forward models, asc-desc biaises) but can also take different forms (e.g; rfi, glints..). Solutions to correct for these problems are not unique and several methods were proposed by different teams working on both missions. We’ll briefly review these issues & solutions. In addition, both mission products help us now discovering what the global skin salinity of the ocean looks like. The centimeter depth SSS sensing by satellites potentially differs from traditional deeper in situ measurements and add uncertainties in interpreting salinity estimates from Space. Nevertheless, several very interesting science application already emerged from the analysis of the first three years of SMOS data over the ocean . In particular, we shall review results which will be discussed more in depth during the meeting oral & posters presentations such as large tropical river plume monitoring, rain-induced freshening imprints in the tropics, upwelling event signatures, tropical instability waves, ENSO/La Nina interannual signals, tropical cyclone/freshwater pool interactions and exchanges of salt across large western boundary currents. Combined with other ocean observing systems, the new products from SMOS and Aquarius clearly add key previously missing informations to better monitor our changing climate

Kerr, Y. ...et al.-- European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2013, 7-12 April, Vienna, Austria, In early November 2012, the SMOS mission celebrated 3 years in orbit. Since its launch, this mission has given many opportunities for breaking new grounds. Shortly after launch, first global maps of soil moisture ever measured from space were produced. Since then, the achieved accuracy has continuously improved to match the requirements. The long term trends of surface moisture can now be closely linked to precipitation regime, and SMOS results have been successfully used in response to extreme events. On the other hand, ocean salinity results have also improved dramatically. Here again, some amazing results regarding river plumes or fresh water pools related to precipitation have been obtained. At last, new applications have been imagined in various fields such as of sea ice thickness, or hurricane winds. This presentation will give an extensive status of the mission, emphasizing the many lessons learned and demonstrating some outstanding results. Some perspectives on the mission and future missions will also be given

European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2013, 7-12 April, Vienna, Austria, We present the most recent results from on-going collaborative sensor inter-calibration and salinity intercomparison analyses between SMOS and Aquarius/SAC-D satellite ocean brightness temperature and salinity retrievals. An important goal of both programs is to inter-calibrate and combine the respective satellite data sets and in situ ocean measurements to provide an accurate and well resolved ocean surface salinity observing capability for ocean and climate studies. At the time of this symposium, SMOS will have completed more that three years of observations and Aquarius more than 19 months. This study will apply the Aquarius data V2.0 to be released at the end of January 2013 (after the submission of this abstract), which includes updated calibration, pointing and geophysical model corrections. The comparison analyses will consist of these elements: (1) Polarized brightness temperatures (TH and TV) interpolated or synthesized at the Aquarius viewing angles, (2) Level 2 salinity retrievals, (3) Level 3 gridded data, and (4) in situ salinity data. The focus will be on quantifying the inter-calibration biases between the sensors, relative uncertainties of the salinity retrievals and the large-scale spatial and temporal systematic biases between the two satellites and in situ data

International audience; The winter of 2012 experienced peculiar atmospheric conditions that triggered a massive formation of dense water on the continental shelf and in the deep basin of the Gulf of Lions. Multi-platforms observations enabled, with an unprecedented resolution, a synoptic view of dense water formation and spreading at basin scale. Five months after its formation, the dense water of coastal origin created a distinct bottom layer up to few hundreds of meters thick over the central part of the NW Mediterranean basin, which was overlaid by a layer of newly formed deep water produced by open-sea convection. These observations highlight the role of intense episodes of both dense shelf water cascading and open-sea convection to the alteration of the characteristics of the NW Mediterranean deep waters.

International audience

International audience; SMOS, the Second Earth Explorer Opportunity Mission, consists of a L Band radiometer using aperture synthesis to achieve a good spatial resolution. SMOS was successfully launched on November 2, 2009. It was developed and made under the leadership of the European Space Agency (ESA) as an Earth Explorer Opportunity mission. It is a joint program with the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France and the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnologico Industrial (CDTI) in Spain. SMOS carries a single payload, an L band 2D interferometric,radiometer in the 1400-1427 MHz h protected band. This wavelength penetrates well through the vegetation and the atmosphere is almost transparent enabling to infer both soil moisture and vegetation water content. SMOS achieves an unprecedented spatial resolution of 50 km at L-band maximum (43 km on average) with multi angular-dual polarized (or fully polarized) brightness temperatures over the globe and with a revisit time smaller than 3 days. SMOS has been now acquiring data for almost 4 years. The data quality exceeds what was expected, showing very good sensitivity and stability. The data is however very much impaired by man made emission in the protected band, leading to degraded measurements in several areas including parts of Europe and of China. However, many different international teams are now addressing cal val activities in various parts of the world, with notably large field campaigns or continuous measurements either on the long time scale or over specific targets to address the specific issues. Comparison with the Aquarius mission is also underway.In parallel different teams are now starting addressing data use in various fields including hydrology. We have now acquired data over a number of significant ''extreme events'' such as droughts and floods or hurricanes giving useful information of potential applications. We are now working on the coupling with other models and or dis-aggregation to address soil moisture distribution over watersheds. We are also concentrating efforts on water budget and regional impacts. It includes rainfall estimates, stress / fire risk indices, thin sea ice monitoring. From all those studies, it is now possible to derive a possible way forward towards drought indices, root zone soil moisture etc... It shoudl be also noted that SMOS is now used operationally by several agencies. This paper thus gives an overview of the science goals of the SMOS mission, a description of its main elements, and panorama of the first results including performances at brightness temperature as well as at geophysical parameters level and how they are being put in good use for hydrological and oceanic applications.

The field of physical oceanography has undergone exponential growth in Spain during the last few decades. From a handful of self-taught researchers in the late 1960s there are now several hundred physical oceanographers distributed in some 20 Spanish institutions, and many more working overseas. The First Spanish Physical Oceanography Meeting (EOF1), held in Barcelona in October 2010, was a good example of the high quality and large variety of this research. The facilities and human resources are excellent but the alarming decrease in public investment in science due to the economic crisis must lead the Spanish physical oceanography community to define its current priorities. In this introductory paper to EOF1 we revise our history and where we are now, and suggest that progress in the near future will rely on our intelligence to sustain and enhance human capital, partnership and society-oriented research., El campo de la oceanografía física ha experimentado un crecimiento exponencial en España durante las últimas décadas. Desde unos pocos oceanógrafos autodidactas a finales de la década de 1960 hemos llegado a varios centenares de oceanógrafos distribuidos en unas 20 instituciones españolas, con otros muchos más trabajando fuera de España. El Primer Encuentro de la Oceanografía Física Española (EOF1), que tuvo lugar en Octubre de 2010 en Barcelona, fue un buen ejemplo de la alta calidad y amplia variedad de estas investigaciones. Las infraestructuras y potencial humano son excelentes pero nos enfrentamos ahora, como resultado de la crisis económica que estamos experimentando, con la amenaza real de una significativa disminución de la inversión pública en Ciencias que debe llevar a la comunidad de oceanógrafos físicos españoles a definir prioridades. En este artículo introductorio a EOF1 revisamos cual ha sido nuestra trayectoria y donde nos hallamos ahora, y proponemos que el progreso en un futuro cercano depende de nuestra habilidad para apoyar y fomentar el capital humano, el asociacionismo y una investigación orientada hacia la sociedad.

Capability for sea surface salinity observation was an important gap in ocean remote sensing in the last few decades of the 20th century. New technological developments during the 1990s at the European Space Agency led to the proposal of SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity), an Earth explorer opportunity mission based on the use of a microwave interferometric radiometer, MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis). SMOS, the first satellite ever addressing the observation of ocean salinity from space, was successfully launched in November 2009. The determination of salinity from the MIRAS radiometric measurements at 1.4 GHz is a complex procedure that requires high performance from the instrument and accurate modelling of several physical processes that impact on the microwave emission of the ocean’s surface. This paper introduces SMOS in the ocean remote sensing context, and summarizes the MIRAS principles of operation and the SMOS salinity retrieval approach. It describes the Spanish SMOS high-level data processing centre (CP34) and the SMOS Barcelona Expert Centre on Radiometric Calibration and Ocean Salinity (SMOS-BEC), and presents a preliminary validation of global sea surface salinity maps operationally produced by CP34., La imposibilidad de observar la salinidad superficial del mar desde el espacio era uno de los problemas importantes para la teledetección oceánica a finales del siglo XX. Nuevos desarrollos tecnológicos durante los años 90 en la Agencia Espacial Europea llevaron a formular la propuesta de SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity), una misión de oportunidad de observación de la Tierra basada en un radiómetro interferométrico de microondas, MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis). SMOS, el primer satélite que intenta observar la salinidad desde el espacio, fue lanzado en noviembre de 2009. La determinación de salinidad a partir de las mediciones de MIRAS a 1,4 GHz es un procedimiento complejo que requiere un excelente funcionamiento del instrumento y una modelización muy precisa de los procesos físicos que intervienen en la emisión de la superficie del océano en el dominio de las microondas. Este artículo presenta SMOS en el contexto de la teledetección oceánica, y resume los principios de operación de MIRAS y el enfoque utilizado en SMOS para obtener la salinidad. Describe el Centro español de Proceso de datos SMOS de alto nivel (CP34) y el Centro Experto SMOS en Barcelona para Calibración Radiométrica y Salinidad Oceánica (SMOS-BEC), así como presenta una primera validación de los mapas globales de salinidad superficial producidos operacionalmente por el CP34.

Foreword of special volume: Advances in Spanish physical oceanography. Scientia Marina 76(Suppl.1) 2012.-- 2 pages, The First Meeting of the Spanish Physical Oceanography (EOF1) community was held in Barcelona between 13 and 15 October 2010, with a high participation of oceanographers from all Spanish (and some Latin American) institutions that carry out relevant research in Physical Oceanography. [...] This special issue is, above all, a celebration of maturity for the Spanish Physical Oceanography community. It gathers 19 papers that represent most, but certainly not all, of the research institutions and topics on Physical Oceanography in Spain [...]

Malanotte-Rizzoli, Paola ... et. al.-- Report of the Workshop “Variability of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean circulation and thermohaline properties: similarities and differences” Rome, 7-9 November, 2011.-- 48 pages

Portabella, Marcos ... et al.-- Earth Observation for Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions Science Conference, 29 November – 2 December, 2011, Frascati, Italy

Font, Jordi ... et al.-- 1st SMOS Science Workshop, 27-29 September 2011, Arles, France.-- 4 pages, 2 figures, The SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) objectives for sea surface salinity (SSS) are to provide global coverage with repetition rate and accuracy adequate for oceanographic, climatological and hydrological studies and increase the present knowledge on: Large-scale ocean circulation, Water cycle exchange rates quantitative estimation, Occurrence of natural catastrophic events, Management of water resources, Role of the ocean in the climate system. To this end the mission requirements were set to determine SSS values with an accuracy of 0.1, in boxes of 100-200 km and temporal averages of 10-30 days [1]. Even the SMOS frequency, 1413 MHz within the microwave L-band, is close to the maximum sensitivity of brightness temperature (TB) to salinity variations, this sensitivity is much smaller than the one for soil moisture. The total range of ocean SSS spans a TB range of 5K, while for soil moisture is 100 K. This implies that the SSS retrieval by SMOS requires a higher performance of the MIRAS interferometric radiometer, the single payload on board [2]. The ESA SMOS Ocean Salinity Level 2 Processor (L2OS) has been designed from 2004 by the team that co-authors this manuscript, and is being now improved to increase its performance and solve the deficiencies observed since it entered into operation during the SMOS Commissioning Phase. It relies on a minimisation of the comparison between the TB at different incidence angles measured by SMOS when overflying a single ocean spot, and a modeling of the sea surface L-band emission that takes into account the actual environmental conditions and all the processes that impact or modify this emission [3]. In this paper we present the status of the L2 ocean products as they were operationally generated during the SMOS Science Workshop in September 2011, the improvements expected from the new processors (version 500) in operation by mid October 2011 and to be used also for the 2011 general reprocessing, and the issues on SMOS SSS retrieval still being investigated at that moment

1st SMOS Science Workshop, 27-29 September 2011, Arles, France.-- 4 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission was launched in November 2009 to provide, over the oceans, Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) maps on a global basis with spatial and temporal coverage adequate for large scale oceanography [1]. An iterative inversion scheme [2] allows obtaining SSS estimations (Level 2 product, Fig. 1a) from the multi-angular brightness temperatures (TB, Level 1 product) provided by the MIRAS (Microwave Interferometric Radiometer by Aperture Synthesis) sensor. [...]

European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, 3-8 April 2011, Vienna, Austria

I Encuentro de la Oceanografía Física Española (EOF), 13-15 de octubre 2010, Barcelona, ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite was launched on the 2nd of November 2009 from northern Russia. The SMOS single payload consists of a synthetic aperture radiometer operating at L‐band (1.4 GHz). It is a challenging mission since this is the first time that such an instrument is put into orbit, and that surface salinity and soil moisture are measured from space. SMOS aims at measuring sea surface salinity (SSS) over the ocean with an accuracy of 1 psu for each overpass at 30‐50 km spatial resolution or 0.1 psu after averaging areas of 200 x 200 km in 10‐30 days. The instrument provides global salinity and soil moisture maps every 3 days. In the SSS retrieval (level 2 or L2) operational processing chain the Geophysical Model Function (GMF), which relates the emissivity of the sea to the SSS (among other geophysical parameters), is defined as the sum of two contributions: the first one is the emissivity due to a flat sea, which is presently assumed to be well explained by the Klein and Swift 1977 model; the second one is the change in emissivity due to the sea surface roughness. In the second term, three different models have been considered in the operational processor, therefore producing three different retrieved salinities. Two of the models are theoretically based, while the third is a fully empirical linear approach, which has been derived from two pre‐launch field campaigns. However, the limited amount of data of sea surface emissivity collected in the different prelaunch campaigns were not representative of the global ocean, nor representative of all sea state conditions, thus limiting the derivation of the empirical GMF roughness induced model. To tune the empirical model and decide on which parameters significantly modulate the emissivity, a large amount of auxiliary data, co‐located in space and time with the SMOS measurements, is required. With the SMOS launch, global calibrated brightness temperature measurements have recently become available. These data, together with in‐situ data (e.g., buoys) and model outputs (e.g., atmospheric and ocean models), are being used to review and redefine (inclusion of non‐linear terms) the GMF, in particular the fully‐empirical roughness term. The tuning methodology together with an assessment of the fully‐empirical roughness model performance will be presented at the conference. This work will set the grounds for the future development of a fully‐empirical GMF (i.e., where the contributions from all parameters, including the flat sea ones, are empirically derived)

I Encuentro de la Oceanografía Física Española (EOF), 13-15 de octubre 2010, Barcelona, The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission (SMOS) from the European Space Agency, launched in November 2009, has initiated the era of satellite‐based salinity observations. However, because of the numerous geophysical contamination sources and the retrieval complexity, salinity products have a low signal‐to‐noise ratio at Level 2 (satellite swath‐based observations). Averaging data in space and time is expected to allow a reduction of the observational error down to mission requirements (0.1 psu) at Level 3 (global maps with regular distribution). However, robust, geophysical consistency is expected to be reached at Level 4, when the SMOS salinity data is combined with data from other sources as, for example, satellite sea surface temperature, surface winds, estimates of evaporation and precipitation, and even remotely‐sensed ocean color. At Level 3, salinity outputs are scrutinized on the basis of their temporal and spatial variability. A first objective is the detection of residual potential error patterns not detected at lower data processing levels (due to residual instrument calibration, external contributions from sun or galactic glint, and land contamination). Specific selection of environmental conditions is used to help distinguish the role of each factor. The second objective concerns the validation against average meridional distribution and global distribution maps. The results will help discerning other potential sources of bias coming from the salinity inversion algorithm and the imperfect forward empirical models and auxiliary information. The spatial patterns of departure from climatology are compared to spatial patterns of other geophysical parameters and anomalies. Other ongoing tasks include checking the consistency between the along‐track salinities at level 2 and the spatio‐temporal averages at level 3 provided by the operational Level 3/4 centre (CP34), and evaluating the expected variance reduction with increasing averaging windows. On the other hand, two strategies are foreseen at the SMOS‐Barcelona Expert Centre (SMOSBEC) to provide Level 4 salinity products: Data Fusion (combination of data from different sources to improve inferences for each product) and Data Assimilation (combination of data from different sources with a numerical model representing the dynamical evolution of the system). Preliminary results at Level 3 will be presented at the conference as well as the methodology planned for SSS Level 4 product development and validation

International audience; SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity), launched in November 2, 2009 is the first satellite mission addressing the salinity measurement from space through the use of MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis), a new two-dimensional interferometer designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and operating at L-band. This paper presents a summary of the sea surface salinity retrieval approach implemented in SMOS, as well as first results obtained after completing the mission commissioning phase in May 2010. A large number of papers have been published about salinity remote sensing and its implementation in the SMOS mission. An extensive list of references is provided here, many authored by the SMOS ocean salinity team, with emphasis on the different physical processes that have been considered in the SMOS salinity retrieval algorithm.

ESA Living Planet Symposium 28 June - 2 July 2010 Bergen, Norway

39th CIESM Congress, Venise, Italie.-- Schroeder, K. … et al.-- 1 page, 2 figures, HYDROCHANGES is an international program supported by CIESM (www.ciesm.org/marine/programs/hydrochanges.htm) initiated in 2002, to monitor the long-term variability of hydrographic properties of Mediterranean water masses – a priority in the context of global warming. We present an overview of the most recent observations and attempt to link the different time series

39th CIESM Congress, Venise, Italie.-- 1 page, 1 figure, The signal of Deep Water Formation (DWF) activity in winter 2009 has been tracked through the HydroChanges (HC) time series, particularly in the classical MEDOC point (HCM: 42°N, 5°E) and on the Catalan continental rise (HCC: 41°28’N, 3°40.4’E), and from CTD data obtained during three cruises during 2009. The results pointed out to an absence of cascading and a new step towards a salinisation of the WMDW newly formed by open sea convection in the western side of NW Mediterranean. The updated data reveal that older WMDW, slightly colder and less saline, has been displaced towards the SE. The salinity of the newly formed WMDW after winter 2009 was ~ 0.005 higher than the previous one, with a potential density increase of 0.002-0.004 kg/m3

39th CIESM Congress, Venise, Italie.-- 1 page, 2 figures, A surface buoy has been designed to measure temperature and salinity with high accuracy and transmit the data by satellite for a long period of time in studies of mesoscale or long scale oceanography. Prototypes have been built and tested in two different versions: to collect data close to the surface or at a depth of 100-150 m depending on the objectives of the experiment. These buoys are mainly used for Lagrangian measurements after being released from a vessel, although long duration tests have also been made with moored units mainly in the NW Mediterranean, This technological development has been mainly funded by the Spanish National R+D Plan through projects CANOA (CTM2005-00444/MAR) and MIDAS-4 (ESP2005-06823-C05)

OceanObs’09 Ocean information for society: sustaining the benefits, realizing the potential, 21-25 September 2009, Venice, Italy, This additional contribution to Oceanobs’09 has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministery of Science and Innovation through grant ESP2007-65667-C04