Aquarius mission from NASA

[climatescinet]

The Aquarius mission was designed to better understand the water cycle, how the ocean circulation works (temperature, salinity...) and their influence on climate. It was launched in June 2011and is now in orbit, giving its first results. Last week, the Aquarius team already gave results on the effect of the tropical storm Lee in New Orleans (sept. 2-3 2011): the Aquarius instruments detected a low-salinity level between the Mississippi river delta and the Florida panhandle. This is likely to be the result of both th increased river discharge and heavy rainfall from the storm on the see surface. This low-salinity feature disappeared after less than a month. More information can be found on 

http://aquarius.nasa.gov/

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/pia15185