CCMP: Monthly Ocean Surface Wind Analysis

RSS CCMP Level 4 Version 3.1 provides a monthly-mean, near-global gridded analysis of 10-meter ocean surface winds at 0.25-degree resolution. It combines inter-calibrated satellite retrievals from U.S., Japanese, and European missions with ERA5 reanalysis background fields. The dataset includes wind speed, vector components, and anomalies, delivered as one netCDF file per month.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in ocean surface wind speed and anomalies.
• Validating and calibrating numerical weather prediction and climate models.
• Studying wind-driven ocean circulation and heat transport patterns.
• Investigating extreme wind events (e.g., storms) over the global oceans.
• Assimilating observational wind data into reanalysis products.

Strengths

• Integrates data from multiple international satellite platforms, likely improving spatial and temporal coverage.
• Version 3.1 includes specific improvements for high-wind-speed performance and reduced spurious trends.
• Maintained by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) with support from a NASA grant, suggesting ongoing curation.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• The license is listed as 'other-license-specified' without further details, requiring user investigation.
• The temporal coverage of the dataset is not explicitly stated, limiting understanding of its historical scope.

Provenance

Source

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), with funding from NASA grants including ROSES proposal 17-OVWST-17-0023.

Collection Method

Combination of inter-calibrated satellite microwave sensor retrievals and ERA5 10m Neutral Stability wind reanalysis.

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:54:36.906305

Geography

Near-global coverage at 0.25-degree resolution.