NASA MEaSUREs OSWV: Ocean Surface Wind and Stress Derived from Satellite Scatterometers

NASA's MEaSUREs program provides the first science-quality release of ocean surface wind and wind stress curl/divergence data derived from the MetOp-A ASCAT scatterometer. The dataset includes auxiliary model fields for wind, precipitation, and surface currents interpolated to the satellite's 12.5 km resolution swath. Version 1.1 features improved metadata and collocation, funded for evaluation by the NASA International Ocean Vector Winds Science Team.

Use Cases

• Validating scatterometer wind retrievals based on intercalibration with MetOp-B, ScatSat-1, and QuikScat mentioned in the description
• Studying ocean-atmosphere coupling dynamics based on derived wind stress curl and divergence fields
• Assimilating auxiliary ocean surface data into weather and climate models based on included ERA-5, IMERG, and GlobCurrent fields

Strengths

• Represents the first science-quality release under the NASA MEaSUREs program
• Includes data from multiple sources: ERA-5, GPM IMERG, and GlobCurrent, with provided DOIs
• Provides global coverage when using all orbits for a single day

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified

Provenance

Source

NASA MEaSUREs/OSWV Project

Collection Method

Satellite-based scatterometer observations from MetOp-A ASCAT, intercalibrated with other scatterometers, and combined with model output from ERA-5, IMERG, and GlobCurrent.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Global ocean coverage