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Full catalog/SMODE_L1_DOPPLERSCATT_V1
SMODE_L1_DOPPLERSCATT_V1·v1·dataset

Ocean surface currents and radar roughness from aircraft

S-MODE DopplerScatt Level 1 Surface Doppler and Radar Backscatter Version 1
land NASA POCLOUD Level 1 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Aircraft radar measurements of ocean surface currents and surface winds, captured as the relative motion between the plane and the sea, along with how rough the surface looks to the radar. Data follow the flight path rather than sitting on a map grid.

How it's made. Collected by the DopplerScatt radar mounted on a B200 aircraft during the S-MODE experiment offshore of San Francisco, saved as geolocated Level 1 measurements.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level input product that forms the basis for higher-level wind and current estimates, used to study small-scale ocean dynamics and to compare against in-water measurements.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › RADAR › DOPPLER VELOCITYSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › RADAR › RADAR BACKSCATTER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2021-05-03 → 2023-04-30
  • Measured byB-200 (SCATTEROMETERS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1
  • Spatial extent-125.4, 36.3, -122.5, 38.1
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This dataset contains concurrent airborne DopplerScatt radar retrievals of surface vector winds and ocean currents from the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) during a pilot campaign conducted approximately 300 km offshore of San Francisco over two weeks in October 2021. S-MODE aims to understand how ocean dynamics acting on short spatial scales influence the vertical exchange of physical and biological variables in the ocean. DopplerScatt is a Ka-band (35.75 GHz) scatterometer with a swath width of 24 km that records Doppler measurements of the relative velocity between the platform and the surface. It is mounted on a B200 aircraft which flies daily surveys of the field domain during deployments, and data is used to give larger scale context, and also to compare with in-situ measurements of velocities and divergence. Level 1 data includes geolocated physical measurements for a measurement footprint, which are the basis for the DopplerScatt L2 surface winds and currents estimates. Data are available in netCDF format and are ordered by measurement acquisition time and radar range, and are not on a geospatial grid.

Get the data

smode_l1_dopplerscatt_v1_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SMODE_L1_DOPPLERSCATT_V1",
    version="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.