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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................................................2
1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................4
1.1. Purpose.....................................................................................................................................4
1.2. Product overview.....................................................................................................................4
1.3. User manual overview.............................................................................................................4
2. The QuikSCAT mission.................................................................................................................6
2.1. Mission Description.................................................................................................................6
2.2. Satellite Description ................................................................................................................7
2.3. SeaWinds Sensor Overview....................................................................................................7
2.3.1. Introduction to QuikSCAT.................................................................................................8
2.3.2. Principles of Operation.......................................................................................................8
2.4. Retrieving wind vectors from scatterometer measurements...............................................9
3. Processing details..........................................................................................................................11
3.1. Processing scheme .................................................................................................................11
3.2. QuikSCAT Level 2B wind data selection............................................................................11
3.3. Wind stress estimation..........................................................................................................12
3.4. Sampling .................................................................................................................................13
3.5. Estimation of gridded wind fields ........................................................................................14
3.6. Wind divergence and stress curl estimation.......................................................................17
4. Product description......................................................................................................................18
4.1. Main characteristics ..............................................................................................................18
4.1.1. Spatial coverage ...............................................................................................................18
4.1.2. Spatial resolution..............................................................................................................18
4.1.3. Grid description................................................................................................................18
4.1.4. Temporal coverage ...........................................................................................................18
4.1.5. Temporal resolution .........................................................................................................18
4.1.6. Land mask ........................................................................................................................19
4.1.7. Ice mask............................................................................................................................19
4.1.8. Main parameters ...............................................................................................................19
4.1.9. Storage ..............................................................................................................................19
4.1.10. Data volume ...................................................................................................................19
4.1.11. Conventions ....................................................................................................................19
4.2. Header structure ...................................................................................................................20
4.2.1. WOCE_version ................................................................................................................20
4.2.2. CONVENTIONS .............................................................................................................20
4.2.3. long_name ........................................................................................................................20
4.2.4. short_name .......................................................................................................................20
4.2.5. producer_agency ..............................................................................................................21
4.2.6. producer_institution .........................................................................................................21
4.2.7. netcdf_version_id .............................................................................................................21
4.2.8. product_version................................................................................................................21
4.2.9. creation_time ....................................................................................................................21
4.2.10. start_date ........................................................................................................................21
4.2.11. stop_date.........................................................................................................................21
4.2.12. time_resolution...............................................................................................................21
4.2.13. spatial_resolution ...........................................................................................................21
4.2.14. platform_id .....................................................................................................................22
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