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Salinity Pilot-Mission Exploitation Platform

SSS and Ocean Color in the Amazon/Orinoco river plumes

Congo river discharge cycles measured at Brazzaville gage during the period 2010-2019. The black curve is showing the Congo River discharge “climatology” from 2010 to 2019

Based upon the Congo River discharge cycle, four main periods can be distinguished as shown in the above figure. From May to July: the low flow ; from August to October: the ascending flow, the high flow from November to January and the descending flow period from February to April.

Here Below we show the spatial patterns of satellite SSS and the absorption coefficient of CDOM at 443 nm derived from monthly Globcolour product. By default, the CCI-L4-ESA-MERGED-OI-V1.8-30DAY-RUNNING satellite SSS product averaged over all years are shown. The user can access to different pairs of satellite SSS and CDOM maps and different averaging period using the following menu:

Left: Satellite SSS averaged over the different periods of the discharge cycle. From top to bottom: low flow (May-July); ascending flow (August-October); high flow (November-January); descending flow (February-April). Right: corresponding CDOM absorption coefficient averaged from monthly Globcolour product. The color bar is logarithmic in unit of 1/m. In each plot the black thick contour curve represents the SSS at 34.