On 5 March 2015, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) discontinued the MetOp-A ASCAT 12.5-km Hamming spatial window netCDF dataset, as announced on their web site:

http://projects.knmi.nl/scatterometer/ascat_osi_12_prod/

It was subsequently declared that the more up-to-date MetOp-A ASCAT Coastal dataset (optimized for coastal wind retrieval) had been upgraded to operational status and selected as the operational replacement for the discontinued 12.5-km Hamming window dataset.

Through concurrence with the scatterometer team at KNMI, the original provider and producer of these data sets, it has been decided that the MetOp-A ASCAT 12.5-km Hamming spatial window dataset should be retired.

As of now, this dataset has been retired. This retirement results in a downgrade of the levels of user service that will be provided from here onward, including: removal from the PO.DAAC web portal search and discovery interfaces, removal from all public facing PO.DAAC tools and services, removal from OPeNDAP, and migration to a “retired” directory location.

All ASCAT data users are hereby advised to only use the replacement MetOp-A ASCAT Coastal dataset, available here: https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/ASCATA-L2-Coastal.

The PO.DAAC has maintained both the near-real-time distribution and historical archival of the MetOp-A ASCAT 12.5-km Hamming spatial window netCDF dataset since March of 2010, and will continue to archive this dataset for legacy preservation as part of PO.DAAC’s retirement agreement with KNMI. The time series for this dataset begins on 3 March 2009 and concludes on 28 April 2015.

All MetOp ASCAT data is produced and provided on behalf of KNMI and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Ocean and Sea Ice Scatterometer Application Facility (OSI SAF).

For any questions or concerns, please visit the PO.DAAC forum: https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/forum/.