The Ocean Archive System searches our original datasets as they were submitted to us, not individual points or profiles. If you want to search and retrieve ocean profiles in a common format, or objectively analyzed fields, your better option may be to use one of our project applications. See: Access Data

OAS accession Detail for 0225450
<< previous |revision: 1
accessions_id: 0225450 | archive
Title: NOAA high resolution sea surface winds data from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) on the Sentinel-1 satellites, from 2021-01-02 to 2021-01-31 (NCEI Accession 0225450)
Abstract: This data set consists of high resolution sea surface winds data produced from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) on board Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellites. This product utilizes the CoastWatch product format and the basic archive file is a netCDF-3 file containing SAR wind, land mask, and time and earth location information. Also archived are maps of the SAR winds in GeoTIFF format. The product covers the geographic extent of the SAR image frame from which it was derived. These SAR-derived high resolution wind products are calculated from high resolution SAR images of normalized radar cross section (NRCS) of the Earth's surface. Backscattered microwave radar returns from the ocean surface are strongly dependent on wind speed and direction. When no wind is present, the surface of the water is smooth, almost glass-like. Radar energy will largely be reflected away and the radar cross section will be low. As the wind begins to blow, the surface roughens and surface waves begin to develop. As the wind continues to blow more strongly, the amplitude of the wave increases, thus, roughening the surface more. As the surface roughness increases, more energy is backscattered and NRCS increases. Moreover, careful examination of the wind-generated waves reveals that these surface wave crests are generally aligned perpendicular to the prevailing wind direction, suggesting a dependence of backscatter on the relative direction between the incident radar energy and the wind direction.
Date received: 20210201
Start date: 20210102
End date: 20210131
Seanames: Arctic Ocean, Bay of Fundy, Beaufort Sea, Bering Sea, Bering Sea - Norton Sound, Caribbean Sea, Chesapeake Bay, Chukchi Sea, Coastal Waters of Florida, Coastal Waters of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Delaware Bay, Great Lakes, Gulf of Alaska, Gulf of Maine, Gulf of Mexico, Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary
West boundary: -180
East boundary: -16
North boundary: 90
South boundary: -90
Observation types: satellite data
Instrument types: SAR
Datatypes: WIND SPEED
Submitter: Qi, Hongming
Submitting institution: US DOC; NOAA; NESDIS; Center for Satellite Applications and Research
Collecting institutions: US DOC; NOAA; NESDIS; Center for Satellite Applications and Research
Contributing projects:
Platforms: SENTINEL-1A (pid: 12741), SENTINEL-1B (pid: 12760)
Number of observations:
Supplementary information: Individual SAR images with wind data at a resolution of 0.5 km processed by OSPO are obtained for the US Coastal Waters - including Alaska and Hawaii (and the Great Lakes). Some coverage has been obtained over the Arctic Ocean North West of Greenland.

SAR products support the following mission/projects: Weather and Water, Ecosystems, Commerce and Transportation, hazard monitoring and response, CoastWatch, the National Ice Center, the Office of Response and Restoration Emergency Response Division, and other NOAA offices.
Availability date:
Metadata version: 1
Keydate: 2021-02-05 12:24:58+00
Editdate: 2021-02-05 14:07:11+00