National Aeronautics and Space Administration official home page

 

University of Rhode Island official home page

 

Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island official home page

 

Other Data Portals:

Sea Surface TemperatureSea surface temperature field for the western North Atlantic showing the Gulf Stream off the eastern coast of the United States

Sea Surface HeightSea Surface Height field of the eastern Pacific Ocean showing a strong El Nino.

Ocean Surface WindsSurface ocean wind field under a hurricane.

Ocean ColorChlorophyll field of the North and South Atlantic.

Ocean Surface PrecipitationRainfall intensity near the center of Hurricane Katrina shows areas of deep convection where latent heat is being released into the storm.

Other Ocean DataAverage distribution of water vapor in January 2003, measured from the Earth's surface to the top of the atmosphere.

Surface ocean wind field under a hurricane.

Ocean Surface Winds Data Portal

The following list summarizes some of the important characteristics of OPeNDAP served data sets accessible through this portal. Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) have been developed to search and access some of these data collections and can be acquired in the Matlab OPeNDAP Ocean Toolbox. The data sets have all been organized and more fully described in a THREDDS catalog, which includes important metadata as well as enabling further access to the data down to the granule level.

All of the following data collections are available via OPeNDAP command line clients:

  • FSU/COAPS NSCAT and QuikSCAT wind data consists of daily and monthly mean fields of stress and pseudo-stress over the near-surface global ocean on 0.5° and 1.0° grids. These COAPS (Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies) wind products were derived from NSCAT and QuikSCAT scatterometer measurements from sun-synchronous orbit. QuikSCAT data have been available since 1999 while the NSCAT coverage is more limited and only available during 1996-1997. Indian Ocean and Gulf of Mexico regional subsets are also included in the NSCAT and QuikSCAT time series data, respectively. A Matlab GUI has not yet been planned for this data set.
  • NASA/JPL NSCAT data were derived from the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) that was launched into sun-synchronous orbit aboard the ADEOS satellite in 1996. Data collection was terminated prematurely due to a sudden power loss in the satellite in June 1997. The time series data consists of daily near-surface wind vectors (both speed and direction) over the global oceans at 50 km spatial resolution. A Matlab GUI has not yet been planned for this data set.
  • NASA/JPL SSM/I Surface Wind data are derived from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) aboard the DMSP series (F-8, F-10, F-11, F-13, F-14, and F-15) of sun-synchronous satellites. These data consist of monthly averaged horizontal wind vectors (speed and direction) on a 1.0° grid over the global oceans from 1987 to 2004. Speed is derived mainly from the DMSP satellite data while direction is assigned by an optimal combination of these speeds, an atmospheric model's output, and in-situ data. This time series includes both Level 3.0 and 3.5 data. A Matlab GUI has not yet been planned for this data set.
  • NASA/MSFC SSM/I Wind Speed data are available on 0.5° daily grids over the global ocean from 2004 to the present. This data set was produced by the Global Hydrology Resource Center (GHRC) from data recorded by the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) aboard the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) series (F-13, F-14, and F-15) of sun-synchronous satellites. Wind speed was derived using Wentz's Decode 4 algorithm. A Matlab GUI has not yet been planned for this data set.
  • NOAA/Coastwatch QuikSCAT Wind data include meridional and zonal components of wind velocity and stress in addition to wind divergence. These time series data were derived from measurements by the SeaWinds instrument aboard NASA's QuikSCAT satellite in sun-synchronous orbit. All computations are performed on the individual swath data, which are then mapped to a global grid of 25 km resolution using a simple arithmetic mean to produce composite images at daily, 3 day, 4 day, 8 day, 14 day, and monthly intervals. Coverage for this data set is limited to only the last year, but it is hoped this will eventually be expanded back in time for a longer time series. A Matlab GUI has not yet been planned for this data set.

In addition, the following data collection is also available through the Matlab OPeNDAP Ocean Toolbox:

  • NASA/JPL SeaWinds on QuikSCAT and Adeos-II has been measuring near-surface wind speed, stress and direction over the global ocean since 1999. The SeaWinds instrument, a microwave radar scatterometer, has been in a sun-synchronous orbit aboard these two satellites. SeaWinds on QuikSCAT was designed as a "quick recovery" mission to fill the gap created by the loss of data from the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT). These time series data, which includes meridional and zonal components of wind velocity and stress, is available daily at a 25 km spatial resolution. A Matlab GUI has been developed for these data and is available in the Matlab OPeNDAP Ocean Toolbox.