Globcurrent

 

Data products

The GlobCurrent data repository now includes the surface geostrophic current, the Ekman current at the surface and at 15 m depth, and the combined geostrophic and Ekman currents. The data are interpolated and collocated to a common grid with a spatial resolution of 25 km and a temporal resolution of 1 day for the geostrophic current and three hours for the Ekman currents and the combined currents. It covers the 23-year period from January 1993 to May 2016. A regional product for the Mediterranean Sea interpolated to a spatial resolution of 1/8 degree and a temporal resolution of 3 hours is also available.

Access and downloading: http://globcurrent.ifremer.fr/products-data/data-catalogue.

Visualization

The data can be visualized at the Syntool visualization website http://globcurrent.oceandatalab.com/. The Syntool front page contains: an overview of products (left); display settings (top); a zoom function (right); and a running timeline (bottom). A wide range of satellite and in-situ data are visualized at global and regional levels. Syntool clearly highlights and demonstrates the ability of sensor synergy for studies of upper ocean dynamics at basin scale (~ 1000 km), at mesoscale (~ 30 to 100 km) and at submesoscale (< 10 km).

Processing

Nansat is a Python toolbox for analyzing and processing 2-dimensional geospatial data such as the GlobCurrent data products https://github.com/nansencenter/nansat. It combines the versatility and power of Geospatial Abstraction Data Library (GDAL) with scientific knowledge about the content of geospatial data. Nansat adds a priori known scientific metadata, following the Climate and Forecast (CF) and Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) conventions, unifies the access and provides a high level Application Programming Interface (API). Spatial transformation and export of the data into common formats (e.g., NetCDF-CF, PNG, GeoTIFF) is facilitated via GDAL.