MetOp-A ASCAT Level 2 Ocean Surface Wind Vectors at 25 km Resolution

MetOp-A ASCAT Level 2 ocean surface wind vector retrievals are produced by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) via the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). The dataset provides near-real-time wind vectors at a 25 km sampling resolution from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) aboard the MetOp-A satellite, with a latency of approximately 2 hours from measurement. Each file contains one full orbit of data in netCDF format.

Use Cases

• Forecasting weather and storm systems based on near-real-time global ocean wind measurements.
• Studying ocean-atmosphere interaction dynamics based on wind vector data.
• Validating and calibrating other wind measurement models based on satellite-derived scatterometer data.
• Monitoring global wind patterns for climate research based on operational satellite retrievals.

Strengths

• Operational near-real-time data with a latency of approximately 2 hours from the latest measurement.
• Data is processed using the CMOD7.n geophysical model function with a Hamming filter for spatial averaging.
• Provided by authoritative meteorological organizations EUMETSAT OSI SAF and KNMI.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The effective resolution is 50 km, which is coarser than the stated 25 km sampling resolution.

Provenance

Source

European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) via KNMI.

Collection Method

Satellite-derived retrievals from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) on the MetOp-A platform.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:47:54.761265; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage from a sun-synchronous polar orbit.