CCMP: 6-Hourly Global Ocean Surface Wind Analysis

A 0.25-degree resolution, near-global gridded analysis provides 6-hourly ocean surface vector winds. This Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform product combines inter-calibrated satellite retrievals from U.S., Japanese, and European microwave sensors with ERA5 reanalysis background fields. Version 3.1, produced by Remote Sensing Systems with NASA support, includes improvements for high-wind performance and reduced spurious trends.

Use Cases

• Validating and calibrating numerical weather prediction models based on satellite-derived wind vectors.
• Analyzing long-term trends in ocean wind patterns and their relation to climate change.
• Assessing wind resources for offshore wind energy projects using a continuous, global time series.
• Studying air-sea interaction processes and ocean surface stress for ocean circulation modeling.
• Providing a gap-filled, quality-controlled reference dataset for other satellite wind products.

Strengths

• Integrates data from multiple international satellite missions, likely increasing spatial and temporal coverage.
• Version 3.1 specifically improved performance at high wind speeds and reduced spurious trends post-2012.
• Maintained with an expected latency of 2-3 months, suggesting ongoing updates and relevance.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as exact row count, file size, and temporal coverage start date is unavailable across all sources.
• The license is listed as 'other-license-specified' but the specific terms are not provided.
• Column names and data structure details are not specified, which may hinder initial data exploration.

Provenance

Source

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), supported by NASA grants (ROSES 17-OVWST-17-0023 and MEaSUREs).

Collection Method

Combination of inter-calibrated 10m ocean surface wind retrievals from multiple satellite microwave sensors and a background field from ERA5 10m Neutral Stability winds.

Time Range

Ongoing time record; specific start year not provided.

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:55:06.790442

Geography

Near-global gridded coverage at 0.25-degree resolution.