The Level 4 merged microwave wind product is a complete set of hourly global 10-m wind maps on a 0.25x0.25 degree latitude-longitude grid, spanning 1 Jan 2010 through the end of 2020. The product combines background neutral equivalent wind fields from ERA5, daily surface current fields from CMEMS, and stress equivalent winds obtained from several microwave passive and active sensors to produce hourly surface current relative stress equivalent wind analyses. The satellite winds include those from recently launched L-band passive sensors capable of measuring extreme winds in tropical cyclones, with little or no degradation from precipitation. All satellite winds used in the analyses have been recalibrated using a large set of collocated satellite-SFMR wind data in storm-centric coordinates. To maximize the use of the satellite microwave data, winds within a 24-hour window centered on the analysis time have been incorporated into each analysis. To accomodate the large time window, satellite wind speeds are transformed into deviations from ERA5 background wind speeds interpolated to the measurement times, and then an optical flow-based morphing technique is applied to these wind speed increments to propagate them from measurement to analysis time. These morphed wind speed increments are then added to the background wind speed at the analysis time to yield a set of total wind speeds fields for each sensor at the analysis time. These individual sensor wind speed fields are then combined with the background 10-m wind direction to yield vorticity and divergence fields for the individual sensor winds. From these, merged vorticity and divergence fields are computed as a weighted average of the individual vorticity and divergence fields. The final vector wind field is then obtained directly from these merged vorticity and divergence fields. Note that one consequence of producing the analyses in terms of vorticity and divergence is that there are no discontinuities in the wind speed fields at the (morphed) swath edges. There are two important points to be noted: the background ERA5 wind speed fields have been rescaled to be globally consistent with the recalibrated AMSR2 wind speeds. This rescaling involves a large increase in the ERA5 background winds beyond about 17 m/s. For example, an ERA5 10 m wind speed of 30 m/s is transformed into a wind speed of 41 m/s, and a wind speed of 34 m/s is transformed into a wind speed of about 48 m/s. Besides the current version of the product is calibrated for use within tropical cyclones and is not appropriate for use elsewhere. This dataset was produced in the frame of ESA MAXSS project. The primary objective of the ESA Marine Atmosphere eXtreme Satellite Synergy (MAXSS) project is to provide guidance and innovative methodologies to maximize the synergetic use of available Earth Observation data (satellite, in situ) to improve understanding about the multi-scale dynamical characteristics of extreme air-sea interaction.

Auxiliary products

This dataset provides the meridional and zonal components of both the stress-equivalent wind (U10S) and wind stress (Tau) vectors. The ERA* product is a correction of the ECMWF Fifth Reanalysis (ERA5) output by means of geo-located scatterometer-ERA5 differences over a 15-day temporal window. The product also contains ERA5 U10S and Tau. The data are available through HTTP and FTP; access to the data is free and open. In order to be informed about changes and to help us keep track of data usage, we encourage users to register at: https://forms.ifremer.fr/lops-siam/access-to-esa-world-ocean-circulation-project-data/ This dataset was generated by ICM (Institute of Marine Sciences) / CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) and is distributed by Ifremer / CERSAT in the frame of the World Ocean Circulation (WOC) project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).

A prerequisite for a successful development of a multi-mission wind dataset is to ensure good inter-calibration of the different extreme wind datasets to be integrated in the product. Since the operational hurricane community is working with the in-situ dropsondes as wind speed reference, which are in turn used to calibrate the NOAA Hurricane Hunter Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) wind data, MAXSS has used the latter to ensure extreme-wind inter-calibration among the following scatterometer and radiometer systems: the Advanced Scatterometers onboard the Metop series (i.e., ASCAT-A, -B, and -C), the scatterometers onboard Oceansat-2 (OSCAT) and ScatSat-1 (OSCAT-2), and onboard the HY-2 series (HSCAT-A, -B); the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 onboard GCOM-W1(AMSR-2), the multi-frequency polarimetric radiometer (Windsat), and the L-band radiometers onboard the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) missions. In summary, a two-step strategy has been followed to adjust the high and extreme wind speeds derived from the mentioned scatterometer and radiometer systems, available in the period 2009-2020. First, the C-band ASCATs have been adjusted against collocated storm-motion centric SFMR wind data. Then, both SFMR winds and ASCAT adjusted winds have been used to adjust all the other satellite wind systems. In doing so, a good inter-calibration between all the systems is ensured not only under tropical cyclone (TC) conditions, but also elsewhere. This dataset was produced in the frame of the ESA funded Marine Atmosphere eXtreme Satellite Synergy (MAXSS) project. The primary objective of the ESA Marine Atmosphere eXtreme Satellite Synergy (MAXSS) project is to provide guidance and innovative methodologies to maximize the synergetic use of available Earth Observation data (satellite, in situ) to improve understanding about the multi-scale dynamical characteristics of extreme air-sea interaction.

Near-real time significant wave height and wind speed modulus

The SWISCA Level 2S (L2S) product provides along-track colocation of SWIM wave measuring instrument onto SCAT scatterometer grid, over the global ocean. SWIM and SCAT are both instruments onboard CFOSAT. CFOSAT (Chinese French Ocean SATellite) is a french-chinese mission launched in 2018, whose aim is to provide wind (SCAT instrument) and wave (SWIM instrument) measurements over the sea surface. The SWISCA L2S product is broken down into three different subproducts: - L2A containing the sigma0 of both SWIM and SCAT - L2B containing the wave parameters measured by SWIM and wind vectors measured by SCAT - AUX containing additional ancillary fields such as sea ice concentration (from CERSAT/SSMI), ocean currents (from CMEMS/GlobCurrent), SST and Wind (from ECMWF), rain rate (from IMERG), and WaveWatch3 wave spectra. All SWIM and ancillary observations are resampled onto SCAT scatterometer's geometry (wind vector cells, WVC). The SWISCA level 2S product is generated in delayed mode, a few days after acquisition. It is intended to foster cross analysis of SWIM and SCAT observations, and their combination to improve the retrieval of both wind and wave parameters. The SWISCA L2S product is generated and distributed by Ifremer / CERSAT in the frame of the Ifremer Wind and Wave Operation Center (IWWOC) co-funded by Ifremer and CNES and dedicated to the processing of the delayed mode data of CFOSAT mission.

The primary objective of the ESA Marine Atmosphere eXtreme Satellite Synergy (MAXSS) project is to provide guidance and innovative methodologies to maximize the synergetic use of available Earth Observation data (satellite, in situ) to improve understanding about the multi-scale dynamical characteristics of extreme air-sea interaction. This dataset, produced in the frame of MAXSS project, provides multi-variate observations for Arctic polar lows (PL), for a selection of storm tracks extracted from Rojo et al (2019) during the period 2010-2018. The observations are taken from more than 35 satellite, numerical model and in situ sources, providing the inner and surface ocean conditions for a comprehensive range of parameters (sea surface height, surface winds, waves, precipitation, temperature, salinity, ocean colour, ...) before, during and after the storm passage. Different colocation radii and time windows are used depending on the parameter and observation dataset. The assembled data are stored in a standardized NetCDF4 file format and organised per basin, year, and storm name to ease data manipulation for users that are not used to work with this wealth of data.