EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Ocean and Sea Ice

The OSI SAF develops, processes and distributes, in near real-time, products related to key parameters of the ocean-atmosphere interface. Products are accessible on local FTP servers with flexible extraction interface, EUMETCast, and EUMETSAT Data Center (EDC). The OSI SAF also offers climatological data records.

The OSI SAF team focuses on scatterometer winds (and microwave winds), Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and sea Ice Surface Temperature (IST), radiative fluxes : Downward Longwave Irradiance (DLI) and Surface Solar Irradiance (SSI), sea ice concentration, edge, type, emissivity, drift.
The OSI SAF currently use data from meteorological satellites both in geostationary and polar orbit.

The OSI SAF is an answer to requirements, from the international meteorological and oceanographic communities, for comprehensive information derived from meteorological satellites at the ocean-atmosphere interface. The OSI SAF offers a precious complement to in-situ data, based on continuously increasing temporal and geographical resolution products from coastal to global coverage.

The quality assessment of the OSI SAF products is done first just before becoming an operational/pre-operational product distributed by the OSI SAF. This first assessment is explained in this scientific validation report. Then continuous monitoring of the product quality is done by the OSI SAF team and presented in the half-yearly operations reports available on the OSI SAF web site project documentation. The quality assessment of the OSI SAF products is done against the target accuracy requirement defined in the OSI SAF Service Specification, according to user requirements.

Users are welcomed and encouraged to contact the OSI SAF in case of questions to or problems with OSI SAF products and OSI SAF support the users as far as possible. Please use the helpdesk form available on the OSI SAF web site (you might need to register on the web site to send the form).

The OSI SAF is co-funded by EUMETSAT and the SAF consortium members, currently Météo-France, as leading institute, and of the following co-operating institutes : MET Norway (Norway), DMI (Denmark), Ifremer (France), KNMI (Netherlands).