Error Characterization of Sea Surface Salinity Products Using Triple Collocation Analysis

The triple collocation (TC) technique allows the simultaneous calibration of three independent, collocated data sources, while providing an estimate of their accuracy. In this paper, the TC is adapted to validate different salinity data products along the tropical band. The representativeness error (the true variance resolved by the relatively high-resolution systems but not by the relatively low-resolution system) is accounted for in the validation process. A method based on the intercalibration capabilities of TC is used to estimate the representativeness error for each triplet, which is found to impact between 15% and 50% the error estimation of the different products. The method also sorts the different products in terms of their resolving spatiotemporal scales. Six salinity products (sorted from smaller to larger scales) used were: the in situ data from the Global Tropical Moored Buoy Array (TAO), the GLORYS2V3 ocean reanalysis output provided by Copernicus, the satellite-derived Aquarius Level 3 version 4 (AV4) and Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) objectively analyzed (SOA) maps, and the climatology maps provided by the World Ocean Atlas (WOA). This calibration study is limited to the year 2013, a year when all the products were available. This validation approach aims to assess the quality of the different salinity products at the satellite-resolved spatiotemporal scales. The results show that, at the AV4 resolved scales, the Aquarius product has an error of 0.17, and outperforms TAO, GLORYS2V3, and the SOA maps. However, at the SOA resolved scales (which are coarser than those of the Aquarius product because of the large OA correlation radii used), the SMOS product has an error of 0.20, slightly lower than that of GLORYS2V3, Aquarius, and TAO. The WOA products show the highest errors. Higher order calibration may lead to a more accurate assessment of the quality of the climatological products.