Data & Resources

Regarding the satellite data there is a wide range of oceanic variables that are used to retrieve and validate the surface currents and frontal structures as indicated in Table 1, including sea surface temperature (SST), chlorophyll (Chl) observations, surface geostrophic current, significant wave height and wavelength and propagation direction.

Table 1. Key satellite sensor data (level, resolution, provider).
Note that radar altimeter data (wave height) are available in the CMEMS multi-observation data set.

Importantly, these satellite data can often be complemented and collocated with in-situ data allowing comparison of the surface current and frontal structures derived from the satellite data to the Argo floats, surface drifter data, HF-radars and on-board estimates of surface currents as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: In-situ sensor data and providers

Moreover, the satellite and in-situ based observation data are combined and extended with surface current and wave field forecast products offering global and regional coverages at spatial resolutions ranging from 25 km to 2km as shown in Table 3

Table 3: Complementary model-based surface current fields. *The GlobCurrent fields is an interpolated regular global surface current product derived from satellite data. Geostrophic balance and Ekman current estimation applied.

Routing optimization tool.
An innovative tool to provide value-added surface current products (see Figure 1) derived from available forecasts as well as from satellite-based and in-situ observations. A series of post-processing routines are implemented to provide the optimized surface current product using a metrics defined to qualify the surface current forecast performances at each in-situ measurement and collocated satellite-based location. In so doing, the comparison of models with satellite derived sea surface temperature and surface geostrophic current is used to assess the ability of the ocean models to locate the mesoscale structures (e.g. eddies, meanders fronts).