Aquarius Level 3 ocean surface wind speed standard mapped image data contains gridded 1 degree spatial resolution wind speed data averaged over a range of temporal scales, from daily to seasonal. This particular data set is the daily wind speed product for version 4.0 of the Aquarius data set, which is the official end of prime mission public data release from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.

Aquarius was a NASA pathfinder mission providing routine, global remotely sensed sea surface salinity measurements from space over the ocean for the period 25 August, 2011 through 7 June, 2015. It was a collaborative mission between NASA and CONAE, the Argentinean space agency. The 1.26 GHz scatterometer aboard the Aquarius observatory, measures ocean backscatter and wind speed in each footprint that is used for surface roughness corrections critical for accurate sea surface salinity retrieval.

References: Lee, T., G. Lagerloef, M.M. Gierach, H.-Y. Kao, S. Yueh, and K. Dohan (2012), Aquarius reveals salinity structure of tropical instability waves, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L12610, doi:10.1029/2012GL052232.

NASA Aquarius project. 2015. Aquarius Official Release Level 3 Wind Speed Standard Mapped Image Daily Data V4.0. Ver. 4.0. PO.DAAC, CA, USA. doi: 10.5067/AQR40-3W1CS).