Mitigation of systematic errors in SMOS sea surface salinity

•An empirical method to correct time independent systematic errors in L2 SMOS SSS•A least square mean approach is used among dwell-line and orbits.•32% improvement when compared with independent TSG SSS measurement•New debiased CATDS - CEC LOCEAN L3OS fields at CATDS

Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) acquired by the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission are subject to systematic errors originating from various non-geophysical contaminations such as land contamination. These systematic errors reach more than 2 pss in some regions close to the land with very strong spatial gradients according to the coast orientation and the across-track position within the satellite swath.An empirical method to estimate and correct the time independent systematic errors from resampled quasi L2 SMOS SSS is presented. The method is based on self-consistency hypothesis of long term (July 2010-June 2014) variability of SMOS SSS among SMOS dwell-lines and orbit orientation (ascending and descending). The bias correction is performed by first adjusting SSS relative variations among dwell-lines and orbits orientation and then by determining a mean correction over four years. A reference time series of SSS and the associated relative systematic error for each dwell-line and orbit orientation is estimated using a least square approach. Then, the 4-year mean value of corrected SMOS SSS is adjusted relative to a 4-year mean in situ data climatology.Four years of salinity maps mitigated from systematic errors are presented. Independent validation using in situ thermosalinograph SSS from ships of opportunity is presented. The new SMOS bias corrected SSS over the global ocean shows an improvement of 32% of the RMSD.