Upcoming update of OSI SAF HY-2B/C/D winds

On 31 October, the existing HY-2B, HY-2C, and HY-2D wind products (OSI-114, OSI-115, OSI-116) will be slightly upgraded. The wind processing algorithms in the OSI SAF have been improved, in particular with respect to Quality Control (including rain screening, Ku-band instruments are highly sensitive to rain) and reduction of wind speed biases. The OSI SAF HY-2B, HY-2C, and HY-2D products have not benefited from all these improvements. They already reached the operational state before the new algorithms became available, and the products have not been adapted since. Therefore, the characteristics of similar products are not the same, which is unfavourable from a user point of view. With this upgrade, we bring the existing HY-2B, HY-2C, and HY-2D products to the same state-of-the-art level as the newest Oceansat-3 products. The file names and the data formats will not change.

More information about the wind products can be found in the Scientific Validation Report (https://scatterometer.knmi.nl/publications/pdf/osisaf_svr_hscat_oscat_winds.pdf) and in the Product User Manual (https://scatterometer.knmi.nl/publications/pdf/osisaf_pum_hscat_oscat_winds.pdf)

For familiarization, the upgraded HY-2B, HY-2C, and HY-2D wind products are currently disseminated in parallel to the current products on the KNMI FTP server:
HY-2B winds (OSI-114) in directories /scat/hy2b_test (BUFR format) and /scat/netcdf/hy2b_test (NetCDF format)
HY-2C winds (OSI-115) in directories /scat/hy2c_test (BUFR format) and /scat/netcdf/hy2c_test (NetCDF format)
HY-2D winds (OSI-116) in directories /scat/hy2d_test (BUFR format) and /scat/netcdf/hy2d_test (NetCDF format)

If you have any questions, then please don't hesitate to contact us on scat@knmi.nl.