Aquarius Satellite Daily Ascending Ocean Wind Speed Data

Aquarius Level 3 ocean surface wind speed standard mapped image data provides daily, ascending-pass wind speed measurements at a 1-degree spatial resolution. This version 5.0 dataset is the official end-of-mission public release from the NASA/CONAE AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite mission. It contains gridded data derived from three radiometers and a scatterometer operating at L-band frequencies.

Use Cases

• Analyzing daily spatial patterns of ocean surface winds using the 1-degree gridded data.
• Studying wind speed variability over time using the ascending-pass-only time series.
• Validating numerical weather prediction and climate model outputs against satellite-derived wind observations.
• Investigating the relationship between ocean surface roughness (from scatterometer backscatter) and wind speed.

Strengths

• Represents the official, final version 5.0 data release from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.
• Provides data at a consistent 1-degree spatial resolution, facilitating global analysis.
• Derived from a sophisticated instrument suite with three radiometers and a dedicated scatterometer for surface roughness correction.

Limitations

• Key metrics like row count, dataset size, and specific column names are unknown across all sources.
• Sources conflict on license information (one lists 'other-license-specified', others list 'None' or 'unknown').
• Data is limited to ascending satellite passes only, which may introduce a temporal sampling bias.

Provenance

Source

NASA and the Argentinian Space Agency Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) via the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing using L-band radiometers and a scatterometer, processed into Level 3 gridded products.

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:08:47.287623

Geography

Global ocean coverage.