Relationship between salinity and sea surface temperature in Pearl River Estuary, China

Sea surface salinity (SSS) is of great important to physical, biological, and chemical oceanographers. Although a challenge, it is possible to measure SSS from space using remote sensing data. However, existed SSS product is only useful for large scale research, i.e. open ocean (with area larger than of 200 × 200 km²), but may play a minor role at local scale study such as in monitoring seawater intrusion in estuary. Therefore, objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between salinity and remotely sensed sea surface temperature. A case study was carried out using MODIS sea surface temperature (SST) product and observational chlorosity in the Pearl River Estuary, China. The results concluded were that a polynomial regression model shows that salinity might be estimated using SST as the mean absolute error is 2.95⁰/₀₀ and in most cases absolute errors were less than 1.2⁰/₀₀.