The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the public release of the MetOp-A ASCAT Level 2 Climate Data Record (CDR) datasets provided by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Ocean and Sea Ice Scatterometer Application Facility (OSI SAF). Two Level 2 netCDF datasets are included in this release:
- 25 km CDR (effective resolution = 50 km)
- 12.5 km CDR (effective resolution = 25 km) optimized for coastal ocean regions (~15km from the coast)
These datasets represent the first historically reprocessed Level 2 ocean surface wind vector climate data record from ASCAT. The wind vector retrievals were processed using the CMOD7 geophysical model function. The data time series for both CDR datasets begins on 1 January 2007 and concludes on 31 March 2014.
Each file corresponds to one complete orbit and is provided in netCDF version 3 format. The beginning of the orbit files is defined near the South Pole.
ASCAT is a C-band fan beam radar scatterometer, providing two independent swaths of backscatter retrievals, aboard the MetOp-A platform in sun-synchronous polar orbit. For more information on the MetOp mission series, please visit: https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/OceanWind/MetOp.
More details and access to the 25-km CDR can be found here:
https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/ASCATA_L2_25KM_CDR
More details and access to the 12.5-km CDR can be found here:
https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/ASCATA_L2_COASTAL_CDR
All intellectual property rights of the OSI SAF products belong to EUMETSAT. The use of these products is granted to every interested user, free of charge. If you wish to use these products, EUMETSAT's copyright credit must be shown by displaying the words "copyright (year) EUMETSAT" on each of the products used. Use cases and feedback on the products will be much appreciated and in fact helps to sustain the reprocessing capability.
Should you have any questions or wish to provide feedback on these datasets, please visit our forum: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/forum
References:
Verhoef, A., J. Vogelzang, J. Verspeek and A. Stoffelen, Long-Term Scatterometer Wind Climate Data Records, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth O, 2017, 10, 5, 2186-2194, doi:10.1109/JSTARS.2016.2615873.