Aquarius Level 3: Monthly Climatology of Ocean Surface Wind Speeds

Aquarius Level 3 data provides 1-degree gridded maps of ocean surface wind speeds averaged into monthly climatologies. NASA and Argentina's CONAE produced this version 5.0 dataset from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite mission's three-beam radiometer and scatterometer system. This specific product uses only measurements from the satellite's Descending passes.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term ocean-atmosphere interactions based on monthly wind speed climatologies.
• Validating other satellite wind products based on the 1.413 GHz radiometer and 1.26 GHz scatterometer measurements described.
• Analyzing spatial wind patterns for renewable energy potential based on the 1-degree gridded data.
• Studying surface roughness corrections for salinity estimation, as referenced in the scatterometer's use.

Strengths

• Represents the official end-of-mission public data release (version 5.0) from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.
• Provides data at a consistent 1-degree spatial resolution for global analysis.
• Derived from a specialized instrument with three radiometers and a scatterometer for cross-validated measurements.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• The dataset is limited to wind speed data 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.

Time Range

Monthly climatology (long-term average), specific temporal coverage is not stated.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 14:41:42.477029; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage, inferred from satellite swath description.