NASA’s Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) released the Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform (CCMP) Winds Level 4 Version 3.1 datasets produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). CCMP produces gridded products that provide a consistent, gap-free time-series of vector winds over the world's oceans from 1993 onward. It combines ocean surface 10m wind retrievals from multiple types of satellite microwave sensors (most of the wind-sensing U.S., Japanese, and European satellites flown to date) with a background field from reanalysis (ERA5). After a hiatus, the updated version of these collections are returning to PO.DAAC. The previous version hosted at PO.DAAC was funded under the Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) project. The most recent version here is produced under an Ocean Vector Winds Science Team grant (ROSES proposal 17-OVWST-17-0023). More information regarding the CCMP project is available on the RSS website.
Several enhancements over the previous V2.0 release are implemented including:
- Use of a more up-to-date and regularly updated reanalysis product for the background wind field. ERA5 was chosen because it is available hourly, facilitating a future enhancement to CCMP for higher frequency analysis.
- Improved performance and agreement with satellite winds at high wind speed.
- Minimized spurious trends caused by the interaction between the amount of satellite measurements available and the satellite/model biases.
- Version 3.1 further improves over version 3.0 by improving the quality of the wind after 2012, see their webpage for details.
Datasets comprising this release include 6-hourly and monthly-mean products, spanning 1993 onward. Both are Level 4, near global coverage (between 80° N/S latitude) at 0.25° resolution. Data are produced in netCDF format. The time record will be added onto as files become available (roughly three month latency).
The RSS CCMP Winds Level 4 Version 3.1 datasets are available in the Earthdata catalog.
Citations
Mears, C.; Lee, T.; Ricciardulli, L.; Wang, X.; Wentz, F. 2022. Improving the Accuracy of the Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform (CCMP) Ocean Vector Winds, Remote Sens., 14, 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14174230
Atlas, R., Hoffman, R. N., Ardizzone, J., Leidner, S. M., Jusem, J. C., Smith, D. K., & Gombos, D. 2011. A cross-calibrated, multiplatform ocean surface wind velocity product for meteorological and oceanographic applications, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 92, 2. https://doi.org/10.1175/2010BAMS2946.1
Animations
Several animations from CCMP winds (wind vectors overlain on sea surface temperature) are available from the previous version of CCMP, and are still relevant for a first look at CCMP products.
- CCMP Winds from June through October 2011 (#1)
- CCMP Winds from June through October 2011 (#2)
- CCMP Winds from June through October 2011 (#3)
- CCMP Winds from June through October 2011 ( #4)
If you have questions, please contact PO.DAAC user services or visit PO.DAAC on Earthdata Forum.