NASA and CONAE's Aquarius/SAC-D satellite provides global ocean surface wind speed data at 1-degree spatial resolution, averaged into seasonal climatologies. This version 5.0 dataset is the official end-of-mission release, containing Ascending pass wind speed retrievals. The data was last updated in June 2015.
Use Cases
- Analyzing seasonal wind speed patterns over global oceans using the 1-degree gridded data.
- Validating numerical weather prediction or climate model outputs against satellite-derived seasonal climatologies.
- Studying ocean-atmosphere coupling by correlating wind speed data with other ocean surface variables.
- Assessing long-term wind trends for renewable energy potential studies in offshore regions.
Strengths
- 1-degree spatial resolution provides global coverage
- Official end-of-mission public data release (version 5.0)
- Data derived from three radiometers and a scatterometer for surface roughness correction
Limitations
- Data is temporally stale, last updated in 2015
- Only includes wind retrievals from Ascending satellite passes
- Specific sample size and row count are unknown
Provenance
- Source
- NASA and Argentinian Space Agency (CONAE) Aquarius/SAC-D mission
- Collection Method
- Satellite remote sensing via the Aquarius instrument's three radiometers and a scatterometer
- Time Range
- Seasonal climatology (aggregated time period unspecified)
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- Global ocean coverage