Hello Norberto,

Unfortunately the OSCAR tools in MGET are broken right now. NOAA recently moved the OSCAR data from one of their own servers to one at NASA. More details about that are here. I followed up with NASA about this to determine whether the data are ready to use or still just a “preview”. NASA said they are ready. Unfortunately NOAA and NASA changed the format of the data, so it is not a simple switch inside the MGET tools to use the new server. I have to change the MGET tools to understand the new format. I have not had time to do that yet, but hopefully can do so within the next month.

Meanwhile, I recommend you try Aviso currents in place of OSCAR. The OSCAR currents are based on Aviso, but add a component that corrects for the influence of winds, using data from other satellites. Because geostrophic forces approach zero at the equator, winds assume a greater role in moving surface ocean water near the equator. That is what OSCAR is supposed to improve over Aviso. If your study area is not near the equator, there should not be much difference between OSCAR and Aviso, at least over a long period of time.

For salinity, until recently, the only source of global dynamic salinity data (i.e. a time series of daily images) was from ocean models such as HYCOM. (Climatological salinity data were available from products like the World Ocean Atlas.) MGET includes tools for accessing HYCOM, under the Data Products node. You can use that to download HYCOM salinity estimates. But keep in mind that these are model estimates, not remote sensing.

In 2011, NASA and Argentina launched the Aquarius sensor, which is the first orbiting remote sensor capable of imaging ocean surface salinity. These data are now available at NASA PO.DAAC. Aquarius has a repeat period of 7 days (it takes 7 days to image the entire planet) so you probably want the 7day or monthly products. Unfortunately we have not built MGET tools to access these yet, and they are in HDF5 format so you cannot use MGET’s HDF to Raster tool to convert them (that tool only works with HDF4 files). It should be possible to use GDAL to convert them, however. MGET includes a copy of GDAL. If you are comfortable using command-line utilities then you might have some success.

I hope that helps,

Jason

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