Aquarius Level 3: Seasonal Ocean Wind Speed Climatology from Satellite

Aquarius Level 3 data provides gridded ocean surface wind speeds at a 1-degree spatial resolution, averaged over seasonal time scales. This version 5.0 dataset is the official end-of-mission public release from the NASA and CONAE AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite collaboration. It is derived from Ascending pass retrievals using a three-radiometer instrument measuring brightness temperature at 1.413 GHz and a scatterometer for surface roughness corrections.

Use Cases

• Modeling seasonal ocean wind climatology based on gridded 1-degree resolution data
• Analyzing satellite-derived wind speed patterns from Ascending passes
• Studying surface roughness corrections for salinity estimation based on the described scatterometer backscatter data
• Comparing radiometer brightness temperature measurements at 1.413 GHz across three incidence angles

Strengths

• Official end-of-mission public data release (version 5.0) from a NASA-CONAE satellite collaboration
• Data is gridded at a consistent 1-degree spatial resolution
• Instrument details are specified, including three radiometers at 29, 38, and 46-degree incidence angles and a scatterometer with a 390km swath

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Data may reflect geographic or temporal bias inherent to the satellite's 370km cross-track swath and Ascending-only passes

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE)

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission, using three radiometers and a scatterometer.

Time Range

Seasonal climatology (time range not specified in input)

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 14:42:50.200060; freshness should be verified

Geography

Global ocean coverage within the instrument's 370km cross-track swath.