Sentinel-1A Ocean Product: Wind, Wave, and Current Data from SAR

Sentinel-1A, launched April 3, 2014, provides Level 2 Ocean geophysical products derived from C-band synthetic aperture radar imaging. The dataset contains geolocated estimates for ocean wind fields, swell spectra, and surface radial velocity, with resolutions down to 5 meters and coverage up to 400 kilometers. Products are mirrored from the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem and provided by the organization ASF.

Use Cases

• Estimate surface wind speed and direction at 10m height based on the Ocean Wind field (OWI) component.
• Analyze ocean swell patterns and spectra based on the Ocean Swell spectra (OSW) component.
• Monitor surface radial velocity for current studies based on the Surface Radial Velocity (RVL) component.
• Perform marine weather forecasting and hindcasting based on the dual polarization capability and short revisit times mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Provides data from a sun-synchronous polar orbiting satellite operating day and night.
• Offers four imaging modes with resolutions down to 5 meters and coverage up to 400 kilometers.
• Includes dual polarization capability and short revisit times for frequent monitoring.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The availability of wind, wave, and current components depends on the acquisition mode, which may not be fully documented.

Provenance

Source

Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, via NASA Earthdata platform.

Collection Method

Derived from Sentinel-1A Single Look Complex (SLC) and Ground Range Detected (GRD) radar products.

Time Range

Data collection began after the satellite's launch on April 3, 2014.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage from a polar-orbiting satellite.