File Naming Convention & L2C Product Definition

This section defines the Level-2C (L2C) product generated by topsocnww3sp.

Product Definition

The L2C product is a NetCDF file that co-localizes Sentinel-1 Ocean Waves (OSW) data with WaveWatch III (WW3) spectral data. The goal is to provide a dataset where SAR observations and model spectra are aligned in time and space for easier comparison and analysis.

L2C Output Structure

The output files use NetCDF groups to separate different types of information:

• SAR Groups: Contain the original OSW data (e.g., SAR_intraburst, SAR_interburst).

• WW3 Group: Contains the associated WW3 spectra. The group name depends on the mode:

  • In lasso mode, it is simply named WW3.

  • In other modes, it is often prefixed by the SAR group (e.g., WW3_intraburst).

• MATCH_MAP Groups: (Used in 1to1, unique, and many modes) Contains mapping information such as distances and pointers from SAR tiles to WW3 spectra.

File Naming Convention

The output files are named following this pattern:

<original_osw_stem>_<product_version>.nc

Example: s1a-iw1-osw-vv-20220107t062429-20220107t062500-041351-04ea80-001_v0.1.nc

The files are organized in a hierarchical directory structure: <output_dir>/<year>/<month>/<day>/<safe_name>/<filename>.nc

Metadata

Every L2C file contains comprehensive global attributes following CF-1.8 conventions, including the processor version, source SAR product, and the co-localization mode used.