Aquarius Level 3: Monthly Climatology Ocean Surface Wind Speed Maps

Aquarius Level 3 standard mapped image data provides gridded ocean surface wind speeds at a 1-degree spatial resolution. This version 5.0 monthly climatology product is the official end-of-mission public release from the NASA and CONAE AQUARIUS/SAC-D satellite mission. The data is derived from three radiometers and a scatterometer measuring brightness temperature and ocean backscatter.

Use Cases

• Modeling ocean-atmosphere interactions based on gridded monthly wind speed climatology.
• Analyzing long-term wind patterns for climate studies based on satellite-derived data.
• Calibrating or validating other wind measurement systems using the standard mapped image format.
• Studying surface roughness corrections for salinity estimation using the scatterometer backscatter data mentioned.

Strengths

• Official end-of-mission public data release (version 5.0) from a NASA-CONAE satellite mission.
• Provides data at a 1-degree spatial resolution across multiple time scales, including monthly climatology.
• Derived from a multi-instrument system with three radiometers and a scatterometer covering a 370-390 km swath.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and exact data volume are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

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).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 14:42:06.459595; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean surface coverage.