Oceansat-2 Scatterometer Level 2B Ocean Wind Vectors in 12.5km Slice Composites Version 2

Each L2B file corresponds to a specific orbital revolution (rev) number, which begins at the southernmost point of the ascending orbit. As a Ku-band dual pencil-beam rotating scatterometer, OSCAT design specs bear a strong resemblence of the Ku-band SeaWinds scatterometers on QuikSCAT and Midori-II (ADEOS-II). The primary difference between OSCAT and SeaWinds is the ~4 degree increase in the OSCAT incidence angle, which acts as an offset to the relatively lower altitude of Oceansat-2 to help provide a nearly identical swath width to SeaWinds.

In the early phase of cal/val, the JPL QuikSCAT Project identified several problems, most of which have been corrected in this latest L2B version. This dataset release is expected to have an accuracy similar to that of the version 3 L2B QuikSCAT product, with minor caveats, all of which are described by Jaruwatanadilok et al. (2014) and summarized in the User Guide document which is made available in PO.DAAC Drive at podaac-tools.jpl.nasa.gov/drive/files/allData/oceansat2/L2B/oscat/jpl/docs/ .

Read software is made available in MATLAB, Python, R, and IDL and is accessible in PO.DAAC Drive at podaac-tools.jpl.nasa.gov/drive/files/allData/oceansat2/L2B/oscat/jpl/sw/ .