The Dielectric Constant of Sea Water and Extension to High Salinity

The range of salinity and temperature measurements used to develop models for the dielectric constant of sea water have in the past been limited to values appropriate for the open ocean. But there are important water bodies, such as the Great Salt Lake in Utah, with salinities much larger than those encountered in the open ocean. Extrapolating existing models to the values of salinity beyond the limits of the data used to create the model can result in unrealistic predictions in remote sensing applications. This can be prevented by using a model for conductivity based on the definition of salinity and ensuring that polynomials used to model the other unknown parameters result in bounded behavior at high salinity. New laboratory measurements with high salinity (up to 150 pss) are reported and used to test a model with these adjustments.