CYGNSS Level 1: Satellite Radar Cross Sections for Ocean Wind Analysis

NASA's CYGNSS constellation provides calibrated Delay Doppler Maps and bistatic radar cross section measurements for ocean surface wind analysis. At most, 8 netCDF files are produced daily, typically from 6-8 spacecraft, with a latency of approximately 2 months. This Version 1.0 Climate Data Record represents a reanalysis product with improved calibration accuracy and stability over previous versions.

Use Cases

• Estimating ocean surface wind speeds based on calibrated bistatic radar cross section (BRCS) measurements.
• Monitoring tropical storms and hurricanes based on increased data retrieval frequency during such events.
• Analyzing long-term climate trends based on the climate-quality, trackwise-corrected data record.
• Studying GPS signal transmit power variations and their impact on radar measurements based on the inclusion of Block IIF satellite samples.
• Quality assessment of remote sensing data based on the provided sets of quality flags, error estimates, and bias estimates.

Strengths

• Version 1.0 CDR exhibits improved calibration accuracy and long-term stability relative to the SDR v2.1.
• Trackwise correction algorithm eliminates the need to screen out GPS Block IIF models, which account for ~37% of the GPS constellation.
• Dataset includes multiple calibrated science products: Power Received, BRCS, NBRCS, DDMA, and LES.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Latency is approximately 2 months, which may limit real-time applications.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by the Delay Doppler Mapping Instrument aboard the CYGNSS satellite constellation and processed into a reanalysis Climate Data Record.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:19:48.437913; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage from the CYGNSS satellite constellation.