The DMSP-F11 SSMI Wind Speed Over Oceans layer indicates the wind speed in meters per second (m/s) over oceans. The imagery resolution is about 0.25 degrees, or about 28 kilometers, and the temporal resolution is daily. This is available in two layers, ascending, local PM and descending, local AM. This layer was constructed by the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) sensor that flew on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F11 spacecraft using a unified, physically based algorithm to retrieve wind speed measurements.

The F11 spacecraft is flown by the DMSP on two operational polar orbiting platforms and had an orbit that was near-circular, sun-synchronous, and near-polar with an altitude of about 853 kilometers. The SSM/I sensor consisted of 7 separate total-power radiometers measuring the intensity of radiation coming from its Earth-viewing reflector operating at four different frequencies: 19.35, 22.235, 37, and 85.5 gigahertz.

References: RSS SSM/I Ocean Product Grids Daily from DMSP F11 NetCDF; WMO Observing System Capability Analysis and Review Tool (OSCAR) - Satellite: DMSP-F11; Wentz, F., SSM/I Version-7 Calibration Report, Remote Sensing Systems, 2013.; Wentz. F., A Well Calibrated Ocean Algorithm for SSM/I, Remote Sensing Systems.