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Full catalog/MWOW_L3_V0.1
MWOW_L3_V0.1·v0.1·dataset

Ocean surface wind speed and direction (6-hourly)

MWOW 6-Hourly Global Ocean Wind Level 3 Version 0.1
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 3 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Wind speed and direction over the world's oceans, reported every six hours on a fine global grid, pulling together readings from several different satellites.

How it's made. A harmonized product combining observations from three scatterometers, a radiometer, and a synthetic aperture radar; rather than blending them, each instrument's observations are kept as separate snapshots within each time window.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for monitoring ocean winds for weather, shipping, and climate research; this is an early version (0.1) meant mainly for stakeholders to evaluate, though the data are considered science quality.

What's measured

OCEANS › OCEAN WINDS › SURFACE WINDS › WIND DIRECTIONOCEANS › OCEAN WINDS › SURFACE WINDS › WIND SPEED

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2023-01-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byMETOP-B (ASCAT) · METOP-C (ASCAT) · IRS E06 (SCAT-3) · SMAP (SMAP L-BAND RADIOMETER) · SWOT (KaRIn)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
  • Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
  • Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description

This data set contains 6-hourly, global gridded wind speed and direction at 0.125 degree horizontal resolution from the MWOW (Multi-sensor Worldwide Ocean Winds) Project. It is a harmonized wind product combining retrievals from a variety of satellite-based instruments, including three scatterometers, one radiometer, and one synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for the Version 0.1 product. Data are available in netCDF format, with one file for each 6-hour timestep. Note that data from the instruments are not aggregated together to create a composite wind map for each timestep. Rather, observations from each instrument are kept separate, split over the “time” dimension. Further, any observations from the same instrument that overlap spatially in the 6-hour window are also reported as separate observations along this time dimension. Version 0 of these data include an initial bulk ingest of data in January 2026 with forward streaming planned for later in the year. Version 0 is primarily meant for assessment by stakeholders, with future versions likely to incorporate feedback from the stakeholders. No User Guide is planned for this version, although the data are considered science quality. Interested users looking for more information are encouraged to contact the data producer. The MWOW Project is funded by NASA’s Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) which provides data products developed to meet the needs of stakeholders from US government agencies.

Get the data

mwow_l3_v0.1_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MWOW_L3_V0.1",
    version="0.1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from POCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.