Seasat Scatterometer: Global Monthly Ocean Wind Stress (1978)

Seasat-A Scatterometer (SASS) data provides monthly averaged ocean surface wind stress from July to October 1978. The data is gridded on a 2.5-degree global grid, with vector wind stress stored in dynes per square centimeter. It is derived from 96 days of SASS vector winds processed to remove directional ambiguities using a GSFC atmospheric model.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical wind stress patterns for climate model validation based on the 2.5-degree gridded data.
• Studying short-term ocean-atmosphere interactions in 1978 using the four-month time series.
• Calibrating scatterometer wind retrieval algorithms based on the objectively removed directional ambiguities.

Strengths

• Provides a foundational, early satellite record of global ocean wind stress from a key 1978 mission.
• Data has been processed to objectively remove directional ambiguities using a GSFC atmospheric model.
• Covers a complete, albeit short, operational period of the Seasat mission (96 days).

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is extremely limited to only four months in 1978.
• Spatial resolution is coarse at 2.5 degrees, limiting fine-scale analysis.
• Metadata conflicts exist: the 'last updated' date differs significantly between platforms (1978 vs. 2026).

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with data supplied by Robert Atlas at GSFC.

Collection Method

Derived from Seasat-A Scatterometer (SASS) wind retrievals, processed using the GSFC Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences atmospheric general circulation model.

Time Range

July 1978 to October 1978

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:13:10.669163

Geography

Global, gridded on a 2.5-degree by 2.5-degree grid.