The meeting aims to inform about and prepare SMOS ocean salinity data users for the content, quality and the caveats of the data available from the European Space Agency’s operational processing and the recent reprocessing of SMOS Level 2 ocean salinity data. It will raise awareness for the present issues in the Level 1 brightness temperatures and how they progress to Level 2 ocean salinity data. The agenda will comprise:

1. A briefing to ocean salinity data users on

i) SMOS mission status (S.Mecklenburg, ESA)
ii) SMOS MIRAS instrument performance and status of level 1 data processing (M.Martin-Neira, ESA)
iii) Status of the level 2 ocean salinity retrieval (J.Font, CICM; J.Boutin, LOCEAN; N.Reul, IFREMER)
iv) Level 3 and 4 data products based on SMOS data (N.Reul , IFREMER; A.Turiel, CSIC)
v) Use of SMOS ocean salinity data for other user communities (N.Reul, IFREMER)

2. User feedback on

i) Global Level 3 SMOS ocean salinity assessment (Ch. Gommenginger, NOC, UK; M.S.Martins et al, University of Hamburg)
ii) Data assimilation (N. McConnell, UK Metoffice; J. Ballabrera, UTM-CSIC)
iii) Bio-geochemical use (J. Salisbury and D. Vandemark (UNH), N. Reul and B. Chapron (IFREMER))
iv) Salinity retrieval in warm waters (G. Alory, LEGOS; J.Boutin, LOCEAN)
v) Salinity retrieval in coastal areas (J.Wesson, Naval Research Laboratory, USA)