ADEOS-II/AMSR L2 Sea Surface Wind

Product Summary

ADEOS-II/AMSR L2 Sea Surface Wind dataset is obtained from the AMSR sensor onboard ADEOS-II and produced by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-II (ADEOS-II) was launched on December 14, 2002 (Japanese Standard Time). The objective of ADEOS-II was to acquire data to contribute to international global climate change research, as well as for applications such as meteorology and fishery. ADEOS-II operation on orbit was given up on October 31 2003, because sufficient electric power was not available to maintain operation of the satellite.
AMSR observes various physical contents concerning to water (H2O) by receiving weak microwaves naturally radiated from the Earth's surface and atmosphere and also regardless of day or night, the presence of clouds. Those sensors aim at collecting global data for mainly understanding the circulation of water and energy.
Level 2 product stores the Geophysical quantity from the brightness temperature of level 1 product.
This product includes Sea Surface Wind (SSW). SSW is retrieved mainly from 36.5 GHz vertical (V) and horizontal (H) brightness temperature of AMSR by a graphical method. The retrieval is restricted to no rain condition since the brightness temperature of 36.5 GHz is saturated under rainy condition, SSW obtained only from 36.5 GHz has a large anisotropic feature depending on an angle between antenna direction and wind direction. Its anisotropic feature is corrected by using two data from 36.5 and 10.65 GHz, since 10.65 GHz data are less anisotropic. Even under rainy condition, 10.65 and 6.925 GHZ data are not saturated, so wind speed is retrieved by using those H data. Retrieval accuracy of wind speed using 10.65 and 6.925 GHz becomes worse than using 36.5 GHz, since a sensitivity of 10.65 and 6.925 GHz to wind speed is not so strong. 36.5 GHz data is used for the algorithm of standard products processing. 6.925 GHz and 10.65 GHz data are used for research product, which is provided from EORC. The physical quantity unit is m/s.
The provided format is HDF4. Spatial resolution is 10 km. The current version of the product is "Version 7". The generation unit is scene (defined as a half orbit).

Platform

ADEOS-II

Sensor

AMSR

Coverage

Temporal Coverage

2003-04-02 to 2003-10-25

Spatial Coverage

Bounding Rectangle
(90.0°, -180.0°, -90.0°, 180.0°)

Resolution

10 km

Location

• GEOGRAPHIC REGION > GLOBAL OCEAN