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CYGNSS Level 2 Ocean Surface Heat Flux Climate Data Record Version 1.2 Dataset Released

Data Release
Issued
June 1, 2023
Resolved

NASA's Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) announced the availability of the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) Level 2 Ocean Surface Heat Flux Climate Data Record (CDR) Version 1.2. This dataset provides the time-tagged and geolocated ocean surface heat flux parameters with 25 x 25 kilometer footprint resolution from the Delay Doppler Mapping Instrument (DDMI) aboard the CYGNSS satellite constellation. Version 1.2 represents the second release of the CDR product-line, and features improved ocean surface heat flux estimates as a bi-product of the improved CYGNSS L2 CDR V1.2 wind speed retrievals; these Level 2 input winds are used as input to compute the flux estimates and feature track de-biasing and other calibration and algorithm improvements. The auxiliary parameters are provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis Version 5 (ERA5) instead of MERRA-2, which has the added benefit of a 1-week latency compared to the latency of a month (or longer) with MERRA-2.

The CYGNSS satellite constellation retrieves winds that cover the global tropical oceans within a latitude band between approximately 40° S and 40° N from August 1, 2018, to present with a forward production latency of approximately one month (or better) from the last recorded measurement time. One netCDF-4 data file is produced each day (each file containing data from a combination of up to 8 unique CYGNSS spacecraft). The data, associated documentation, tools, and services are described and discoverable via the Earthdata catalog.

Download data using the PO.DAAC Data Subscriber: 

Citation

CYGNSS. 2023. CYGNSS Level 2 Ocean Surface Heat Flux Climate Data Record Version 1.2. Ver. 1.2. PO.DAAC, CA, USA. Dataset accessed [YYYY-MM-DD] at https://doi.org/10.5067/CYGNS-C2H12

Reference

Crespo, J. A., Posselt, D. J., & Asharaf, S. (2019). CYGNSS Surface Heat Flux Product Development. Remote Sens. 2019, 11, 2294. doi:10.3390/rs11192294.

Related Animation

View an animation of the estimated ocean surface latent and sensible heat fluxes over the period of Aug. 1, 2018, to May 19, 2023, produced using the CYGNSS Level 2 Ocean Surface Heat Flux Climate Data Record Version 1.2, which provides the time-tagged and geolocated ocean surface heat flux parameters with 25 x 25 kilometer resolution using wind speed data provided by the Delay Doppler Mapping Instrument (DDMI) aboard the CYGNSS satellite constellation.

If you have questions, please contact PO.DAAC user services or visit PO.DAAC on Earthdata Forum.

Referenced Datasets

Details

Last Updated

Dec. 9, 2025

Published

June 1, 2023

Data Center/Project

Physical Oceanography DAAC (PO.DAAC)