The determination of surface salinity with SMOS - recent results and main issues

The European Space Agency SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission aims at obtaining global maps of both variables from space for large scale climatic studies. In uses an L-band microwave interferometric radiometer with aperture synthesis (MIRAS) to measure brightness temperature (T/sub B/) emitted by the Earth surface and then compute from it the two geophysical parameters. The retrieval of salinity is a complex process that requires the knowledge of other environmental information and an accurate processing of the radiometer measurements. Here we present the recent results obtained from different studies and campaigns as part of the SMOS mission and highlight the different issues still to be solved.