CYGNSS Level 2 Ocean Surface Heat Flux Science Data Record Version 2.0

This dataset contains the Version 2.0 CYGNSS Level 2 Ocean Surface Heat Flux Science Data Record, which provides time-tagged and geolocated ocean surface heat flux parameters with 25x25 kilometer footprint resolution from the Delay Doppler Mapping Instrument (DDMI) aboard the CYGNSS satellite constellation. The reported sample locations are determined by the specular points corresponding to the Delay Doppler Maps (DDMs). Version 2.0 represents the second release of this product, which now uses CYGNSS Level 2 (L2) Science Data Record (SDR) Version 3.1 surface wind speeds and ECMWF Reanalysis, Version 5 (ERA5). Version 1.0 used CYGNSS L2 SDR Version 2.1 surface wind speeds and NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications Version 2 (MERRA-2). The Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) algorithm is what is used in this dataset to estimate the latent and sensible heat fluxes and their respective transfer coefficients. While COARE's initial intentions were for low to moderate wind speeds, the version used for this product, COARE 3.5, has been verified with direct in situ flux measurements for wind speeds up to 25 m/s. As CYGNSS does not provide air/sea temperature, humidity, surface pressure or density, the producer of this dataset obtains these values from this dataset obtains these values from ERA5. The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), launched on 15 December 2016, is a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Mission that was launched with the purpose to collect the first frequent space-based measurements of surface wind speeds in the inner core of tropical cyclones. Made up of a constellation of eight micro-satellites, the CYGNSS observatories provide nearly gap-free Earth coverage with a mean (i.e., average) revisit time of seven hours and a median revisit time of three hours. As a result of the CYGNSS constellation coverage, this data is made available from 1 August 2018 to present with an approximate 1 week latency in the netCDF-4 formatted data files, where each file contains data within a 24-hour UTC period from a combination of up to 8 unique CYGNSS spacecraft. More information on CYGNSS can be found on the CYGNSS mission page.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field	Value
Maintainer	Earthdata Forum
Last Updated	April 6, 2026, 19:29 (UTC)
Created	April 1, 2025, 15:18 (UTC)
accessLevel	public
bureauCode	{026:00}
catalog_conformsTo	https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id	b0bb7589-b82a-45ad-ac94-1278390f820e
harvest_source_id	b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title	Science Discovery Engine
identifier	10.5067/CYGNS-L2H20
license	https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified	2026-03-30T22:16:00Z
programCode	{026:000}
publisher	NASA/JPL/PODAAC;NASA/ESSP/UMICH/CYGNSS
resource-type	Dataset
source_datajson_identifier	true
source_hash	5461701a14b79c5fee111f11b25817080802d2e8b87f37364cb71861fe52a524
source_schema_version	1.1
spatial	["CARTESIAN",[{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":38.0,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-38.0}]]
theme	{"Earth Science"}