Coastal Ocean Surface Wind Vectors from MetOp-A ASCAT Satellite

Operational near-real-time Level 2 coastal ocean surface wind vector retrievals from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) on the MetOp-A satellite at 12.5 km sampling resolution. The product is generated by the EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) via the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and was last updated in the platform in November 2021. It utilizes a spatial box filter on full-resolution Sigma-0 retrievals to compute wind vectors as close as ~15 km from coastlines.

Use Cases

• Modeling coastal wind patterns and storm surge by analyzing wind vector cells computed from Sigma-0 backscatter retrievals.
• Validating numerical weather prediction models in coastal zones using the 12.5 km resolution wind vector data.
• Studying air-sea interactions near coastlines using the enhanced retrieval that includes measurements within ~15 km of land.
• Assimilating near-real-time wind observations into forecasting systems, leveraging the dataset's approximate 2-hour latency from measurement.

Strengths

• Enhanced coastal retrieval allows wind computation within ~15 km of coast, compared to a ~35 km mask in standard products.
• Data is provided in near-real-time with approximately 2 hours latency from the latest measurement.
• Utilizes full-resolution Level 1B Sigma-0 retrievals within a 15 km radius for spatial averaging, discarding non-sea retrievals.

Limitations

• The effective spatial resolution of the wind vectors is 25 km, despite the 12.5 km sampling.
• Dataset availability and updates in this specific repository were last recorded in 2021, which may indicate stale metadata or access.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and complete temporal coverage are not provided in the source description.

Provenance

Source

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).

Collection Method

Derived from Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) C-band radar backscatter (Sigma-0) measurements on the MetOp-A satellite, processed using a spatial box filter and the CMOD7.n geophysical model function.

Freshness

Near-real-time with ~2 hour latency from measurement; platform metadata last updated 2021-11-15.

Geography

Global ocean coverage from the MetOp-A sun-synchronous polar orbit, with enhanced focus on coastal regions.