Recently, an interesting paper has been published. It is a bibliometric analysis of remote sensing of sea surface salinity. The good news is that SMOS fares pretty well in the study and especially the SMOS salinity Authors who are the first four authors (table 4) and represent 10 of the top fifteen authors publications indexed in Scopus!
Congratulations to the first four: Jacqueline, Nicolas, Jordi and Adriano! A mention also to our colleagues David, Tony and Gary who have been with us since the beginning and of course to Aquarius and SMAP… this shows what can be done with L band radiometry over oceans!
All this is very nice but stresses once more the lack of vision of our decision makers who, when SMOS and SMAP are getting quite old (and Aquarius is no more) , do not support a follow on with an adequate spatial resolution (ideal 10 km , threshold 40 km, currently there is no programme covering this unique measurements), jeopardising the outstanding science (and operational applications) ….
Figure from Zanon et al., “Remote sensing of sea surface salinity: A bibliometric analysis”