Sea surface salinity (SSS) is one of the Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) as defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Acquiring high-quality SSS datasets with high spatial-temporal resolution is crucial for research on the hydrological cycle and the earth climate. This study assessed the quality of SSS data provided by five high-resolution ocean reanalysis products, including the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) 1/12° global reanalysis, the Copernicus Global 1/12° Oceanic and Sea Ice GLORYS12 Reanalysis, the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) reanalysis, the ECMWF Oceanic Reanalysis System 5 (ORAS5) product and the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean Phase II (ECCO2) reanalysis. Regional comparison in the Mediterranean Sea shows that reanalysis largely depicts the accurate spatial SSS structure away from river mouths and coastal areas but slightly underestimates the mean SSS values. Better SSS reanalysis performance is found in the Levantine Sea while larger SSS uncertainties are found in the Adriatic Sea and the Aegean Sea. The global comparison with CMEMS level-4 (L4) SSS shows generally consistent large-scale structures. The mean ΔSSS between monthly gridded reanalysis data and in situ analyzed data is −0.1 PSU in the open seas between 40° S and 40° N with the mean Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) generally smaller than 0.3 PSU and the majority of correlation coefficients higher than 0.5. A comparison with collocated buoy salinity shows that reanalysis products well capture the SSS variations at the locations of tropical moored buoy arrays at weekly scale. Among all of the five products, the data quality of HYCOM reanalysis SSS is highest in marginal sea, GLORYS12 has the best performance in the global ocean especially in tropical regions. Comparatively, ECCO2 has the overall worst performance to reproduce SSS states and variations by showing the largest discrepancies with CMEMS L4 SSS.

Currently, the performance of sea ice thickness (SIT) data retrieved from multisource satellite products in the Arctic seasonal ice zones remains unclear. This study presented the spatiotemporal intercomparison and evaluation of satellite data, including the latest versions of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS), CryoSat-2, combined CryoSat-2 and SMOS (CS2SMOS), and Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), specifically focusing on area with mean SIT below 0.5 m. Five evaluation datasets were used. During 2010–2023, SMOS had the smallest mean SIT, with CryoSat-2 showing the largest mean SIT. During 2018–2023, with the inclusion of ICESat-2, SMOS still showed the smallest mean SIT. CryoSat-2 exhibited the largest mean SIT, followed by ICESat-2, CS2SMOS ranked third. Evaluation results indicated that four satellite products generally underestimated SIT. In two periods, SMOS consistently exhibited the weakest performance, which showed a large gap from what was expected in previous studies. In contrast, CS2SMOS demonstrated the highest alignment with five evaluation datasets during 2010–2023, indicating the best overall performance. During 2018–2023, ICESat-2 exhibited the best overall performance with two evaluation datasets. This study refreshes previous knowledge about SMOS in the seasonal ice zones and contributes to further improvements in SIT retrieval.

Sea surface salinity (SSS) is one of the Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) as defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Acquiring high-quality SSS datasets with high spatial-temporal resolution is cruicial for research on the hydrological cycle and earth climate. This study assessed the quality of SSS data provided by four high-resolution ocean reanalysis products, including the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) 1/12° global reanalysis, the The Copernicus Global 1/12° Oceanic and Sea Ice GLORYS12 Reanal-ysis, the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) reanalysis, the ECMWF Oceanic Reanalysis System 5 (ORAS5) product and the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean Phase II (ECCO2) reanalysis. Regional comparison in the Mediterranean Sea shows that reanalysis largely depicts the accurate spatial SSS structure away from river mouths and coastal areas but slightly underestimates the mean SSS values. Better SSS reanalysis performance is found in the Levantine Sea while larger SSS uncertainties are found in the Adriatic Sea and the Aegean Sea. The global comparison with CMEMS level-4 (L4) SSS show generally con-sistent large-scale structures. The mean ΔSSS between monthly gridded reanalysis data and in situ analyzed data is -0.1 PSU in the open seas between 40°S and 40°N with the mean Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) generally smaller than 0.3 PSU and the majority of correlation coefficients higher than 0.5. Comparison with collocated buoy salinity shows that reanalysis products well captures the SSS variations at the locations of tropical moored buoy arrays at weekly scale. Among all the four products, the data quality of HYCOM re-analysis SSS is highest in marginal sea, GLORYS12 has the best performance in the global ocean especially in tropical regions. Comparatively, ECCO2 has the overall worst performance to reproduce SSS states and variations by showing the largest discrepancies with CMEMS L4 SSS.

A high-resolution unstructured-grid ocean model was used to investigate the generation, propagation, and dissipation of M₂ internal tides in the Luzon Strait and northeastern South China Sea, with the aim of clarifying how energy evolves across contrasting topographic regimes. Wave decomposition, harmonic and modal analyses, energy-budget diagnostics, and along-path tracking were applied to quantify the spatial distribution and modal evolution of internal-tide energy. The results show that the Luzon Strait double-ridge system is the primary source region, contributing approximately 4.826 GW of barotropic-to-baroclinic energy conversion, with the Lanyu Ridge (3.080 GW) exhibiting stronger conversion than the Hengchun Ridge (1.643 GW). The generated low-mode internal tides radiate mainly westward into the northeastern South China Sea, with energy progressively attenuated over the deep basin and continental slope. Energy-budget analyses indicate that the ridge region dominates generation, the Luzon Trough mainly supports transmission, and the deep basin and slope are associated with enhanced dissipation and scattering. Along-path energetic diagnostics quantitatively reveal a sequential depletion of mode 1 internal-tide energy in the vicinities of steep topography and internal-tide steepening zones, concomitant with a marked augmentation of mode 2 energy and intensified cross-frequency energy transfer. Specifically, within the deep basin of the South China Sea, the fractional contribution of mode 1 energy declines from 78.3% to 73.8% as the internal tide propagates from the abyssal to the shallower shelf-slope region, whereas that of mode 2 increases correspondingly from 18.2% to 24.3%. Moreover, pronounced internal-tide steepening is observed in the deep basin, and the spectrally integrated cross-frequency transfer coefficient reaches 0.32 in this area, substantially exceeding that in other regions. These findings suggest that topographic scattering, modal redistribution, and nonlinear interactions contribute substantially to regional internal-tide dissipation.