S-MODE DopplerScatt Level 2 Ocean Winds and Currents Version 2

This dataset contains concurrent airborne DopplerScatt radar retrievals of surface vector winds and ocean currents from the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE). 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. Data were collected approximately 300 km offshore of San Fransisco during a pilot campaign in October 2021, and two intensive operating periods (IOPs) in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. 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 2 data includes estimates of surface winds and currents. The V2 data have been cross-calibrated against ADCPs, surface drifters, and the SIO-DopVis instrument collected during the Pilot and IOP1 campaigns. Additional DopVis data collected during IOP1 and IOP2, in addition to IOP2 ADCP and surface drifter data will lead to a reprocessing of this dataset, and it should be regarded as provisional. Data are available in netCDF format.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated March 10, 2026, 03:20 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 18:35 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 254e36c0-80a0-446b-82f1-e3e587e4f42d
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/SMODE-DSCT2-V2
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-03-05T23:29:35Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher NASA/JPL/PODAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 782696c5c216ee0888b93ca51e4ab85b8acf5b6f3316fa513f60afa51be4abfd
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN",[{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":38.4,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-126.5,"EastBoundingCoordinate":-122.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":36.0}]]
temporal 2021-10-20/2023-04-30
theme {"Earth Science"}