Wind bias correction guide

Within the Satellite Application Facility for Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP SAF) software is made for processing scatterometer data over the open ocean to ocean vector winds. This software is freely available upon registration, and is also used in the Ocean and Sra Ice SAF (OSI SAF) to produce near-real-time ocean vector wind products.

It has been demonstrated that the SAF scatterometer winds are accurate and reliable. Yet, as every measured quantity, these products have their own error characteristics. Long term monitoring is needed to reveal these characteristics, and this is part of the tasks of the NWP SAF and OSI SAF project teams. Correction for biases in scatterometer winds is considered to be the responsibility of the user. This document is written for all users of NWP SAF scatterometer wind processors or OSI SAF wind products. It gives the state of the art concerning scatterometer wind error characteristics in terms of resolution and accuracy, and contains recommendations how to correct for biases. The authors hope that this will help the user community to exploit the potential of scatterometer wind data as much as possible.