A comparison is presented of remote and shipboard measurements of sea surfa
ce salinity made in the vicinity of the Delaware coastal current, a low sal
inity band with its source in the mouth of Delaware Bay. The remote sensing
measurements were made from an aircraft with the Electronically Scanned Th
inned Array Radiometer. The shipboard measurements were made with a thermos
alinograph on board the R/V Cape Henlopen. On 29-30 April 1993, the RN Cape
Henlopen sailed from the mouth of Delaware Bay south toward Chesapeake Bay
in an east-west zig-zag pattern, repeatedly crossing the coastal current.
The aircraft, a NASA P-3, flew the same lines on the afternoon of 30 April.
Both thermosalinograph- and microwave radiometer-derived salinity maps cle
arly show the freshwater signature of the coastal current and generally are
in agreement to within about 1 psu.