EARS ASCAT-B Coastal product

Data from 20250114

Product status: operational

Ascending passes

Descending passes

Description

The ASCAT Wind Product contains measurements of the wind direction and wind speed above the sea surface. The measurements are obtained through the processing of scatterometer data originating from the ASCAT instrument on EUMETSAT's Metop-B satellite, as described in the ASCAT Wind Product User Manual.

The processing is done in near-real time. In the context of this regional service, data are acquired locally by a network of AHRPT stations, located within the North Atlantic, Europe and Indian Ocean regions and processed jointly by the EARS ground system and KNMI. From the sensing time of the last measurement in a product, it takes approximately 15 minutes to get the corresponding wind product ready at KNMI. The timeliness is in line with the goals of the EARS service for products generated from satellite direct broadcast data.

This product in intended for nowcasting applications, where high timeliness and resolution are very important.

The last 22 hours of data are shown in two separate plots showing ascending and descending tracks, respectively. This is done to avoid overlap of data in the pictures. Note that also data from previous days can be displayed using the link on the right hand side. The overview plots show color coded wind speed measurements. If you click somewhere in the satellite track, a picture appears showing the scatterometer winds in more detail.

Product monitoring information in near-real time is available through the corresponding link on the right hand side.

Note: This web site is not supported on a 24x7 basis and it should not be considered operational.

Access to products

This wind product is available in BUFR format. The data are disseminated through the EUMETCast system; for access please contact EUMETSAT. The products are also available on a password protected FTP server (products of the last three days only). Contact the KNMI scatterometer team for access.

Note: All intellectual property rights of the OSI SAF and EARS products belong to EUMETSAT. The use of these products is granted to every interested user, free of charge. If you wish to use these products, EUMETSAT's copyright credit must be shown by displaying the words "copyright (year) EUMETSAT" on each of the products used.

Modifications/anomalies

14-Jan-2025	The ASCAT-B winds have been unavailable on 14 January between 12:30 and 15:33 UTC sensing time due to an instrument anomaly.
12-Dec-2024	Update of ASCAT level 1b processing. A new land mask is used to compute the Land Contamination Ratio (LCR). The main impact of this update is an improvement of the land sea mask which corrects the location of some islands and other coastlines
28-Mar-2023	The EARS ASCAT winds have been unavailable between 25 March 10:00 and 28 March 7:00 UTC sensing time due to a ground segment anomaly.
16-Jan-2023	Introduction of Land Contamination Ratio in ASCAT input data. The minimum distance of winds to the coast is reduced from approximately 20 km to 10 - 15 km in the new products.
04-Oct-2022	Upgrade of wind processing chain in preparation of introduction of Land Contamination Ratio in ASCAT input data. AWDP version is 3_3_01.
03-Dec-2021	The ASCAT-B winds have been unavailable on 3 December between 12:30 and 16:39 UTC sensing time due to an instrument anomaly.
02-Sep-2019	The EARS ASCAT winds have been unavailable between 31 August 12:00 and 2 September 12:00 UTC due to a ground segment anomaly.
05-Apr-2019	The EARS ASCAT winds have been unavailable between 4 April 13:00 and 5 April 6:00 UTC due to a ground segment anomaly.
25-Sep-2018	The CMOD7 Geophysical Model Function replaces CMOD5n for wind retrieval; stress-equivalent ECMWF model background winds are used instead of real 10m winds. AWDP version is 3_2_01.
08-Sep-2018	The ASCAT-B winds have been unavailable on 8 September between 12:50 and 17:30 UTC sensing time due to an instrument anomaly.
28-Jan-2017	The ASCAT-B EARS winds have been unavailable on 28 January between 17:33 and 21:22 UTC sensing time due to a EUMETCAST dissemination outage.
18-Sep-2016	The ASCAT-B winds have been unavailable on 17 September between 12:15 and 18:51 UTC and between 17 September 20:24 and 18 September 15:09 UTC sensing time due to a power outage at KNMI.
27-Apr-2016	The ASCAT winds have been unavailable on 27 April between 11:00 and 14:00 UTC sensing time due to a Metop-B out of plane manoeuvre.
29-Mar-2016	The EARS 12.5 km wind products have been replaced by 12.5 km coastal wind products. AWDP version is 2_4_01.

Acknowledgements

KNMI hosts the operational deployment of this product as part of the EUMETSAT Advanced Retransmission Service (EARS), see related link or click on the EUMETSAT logo above for more information.

The processing software for the wind products is developed in the EUMETSAT Numerical Weather Prediction Satellite Application Facility (NWP SAF) and Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF).