Aquarius L3: Daily Descending Ocean Surface Wind Speed Gridded Data

Version 5.0 of the Aquarius Level 3 wind speed product provides daily, gridded ocean surface wind speed data at a 1-degree spatial resolution, derived exclusively from satellite descending passes. The data originates from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission, a collaboration between NASA and Argentina's CONAE, using a three-radiometer instrument operating at 1.413 GHz and a 1.26 GHz scatterometer for surface roughness correction. This dataset represents the official end-of-mission public release, offering averaged data across daily, 7-day, monthly, and seasonal timescales.

Use Cases

• Analyzing daily ocean wind speed variability based on the 1-degree gridded data product.
• Studying seasonal wind patterns using the averaged monthly and seasonal timescales.
• Validating oceanographic models with satellite-derived wind speed measurements from the Aquarius radiometers.
• Investigating surface roughness effects on satellite salinity retrievals using the co-located scatterometer backscatter data.

Strengths

• Represents the official, final public data release (Version 5.0) from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.
• Provides data at multiple temporal aggregations: daily, 7-day, monthly, and seasonal.
• Derived from a sophisticated satellite instrument suite with three radiometers and a dedicated scatterometer for correction.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low; specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not provided by any source.
• Conflicting freshness information: one platform lists an update date in 2026, while another lists 2015, suggesting potential metadata errors.
• The dataset is limited to wind speed retrievals from descending satellite passes only.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission's radiometers and scatterometer.

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:04:53.957457

Geography

Global ocean coverage.