The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the release of the 3rd
processed version of the QuikSCAT Level 2B Ocean Wind Vectors in 12.5km Slice
Composites dataset produced by the QuikSCAT Project at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL). This dataset consists of Version 3 Level 2B (L2B)
science-quality ocean surface wind vector retrievals from the Quick
Scatterometer (QuikSCAT). L2B data are in an along-track/cross-track swath
grid with a pixel (wind vector cell) resolution of 12.5 km (i.e., points are
non-uniform compared to Level 3 or 4 latitude/longitude gridded
datasets). This resolution is achieved through a slice composite technique in
which high-resolution slice measurements from L1B data are composited into a
12.5 km wind vector cell. This version contains an improved geophysical model
function (GMF), known as QSCAT12 (Fore et al., 2013). Other improvements over
the previous L2B version include: 1) changes to measurement binning, which
was done in order to decrease noise and reduce gaps in the 12.5 km L2B wind
retrievals, 2) a neural network approach to correct rain contaminated winds
speeds, and 3) cross-track dependent wind speed biases were estimated and
removed from the wind retrievals. Each L2B file corresponds to a specific
orbital revolution number, which begins at the southernmost point of the
ascending orbit.
Fore et al. (2013) describe more details of this dataset, which are
summarized in the User Guide:
ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/OceanWinds/quikscat/L2B12/docs/qscat_l2b_v3_ug_v1_0.pdf.
Read software is made available in MATLAB, Python, R and IDL and is
accessible here: ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/OceanWinds/quikscat/L2B12/sw/netcdf/.
Data files are provided in a CF-compliant, netCDF version 4 format,
accessible at: ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/OceanWinds/quikscat/L2B12/v3/.
The primary dataset information page is provided through our web portal at:
http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/QSCAT_LEVEL_2B_OWV_COMP_12.
Should you have any questions or wish to provide feedback on this dataset,
please contact us at: podaac@podaac.jpl.nasa.gov
References:
[1] Fore, A.G., Stiles, B.W., Chau, A.H., Williams, B.A., Dunbar, R. S.,
Rodríguez E., 2013: Point-wise Wind Retrieval and Ambiguity Removal
Improvements for the QuikSCAT Climatological Data Set. Accepted for
publication in IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing,
doi:10.1109/TGRS.2012.2235843, 2013.