THE ADVANCED SCATTEROMETER PROCESSING SYSTEM FOR ERS DATA: THIRTEEN YEARS OF OCEAN WINDS FROM SPACE

since the launch of ers-1 in 1991 and ers-2 in 1995, carrying a c-band scatterometer, a data set of more than thirteen years of backscattered signal from the earth surface is available for exploitation. with its global coverage, day or night and all-weather operation, ers scatterometer data offer a unique opportunity for long-term studies and research. to fulfill the needs of the scientific community, the european space agency (esa) has developed the project: advanced scatterometer processing system (asps). main scope of the project is to provide with state of the art algorithm, high quality and homogenous scatterometer measurements (sigma nought) of the earth surface and high quality wind field over the oceans by re-processing the entire ers mission. additional scope is to provide on experimental basis scientific products in high resolution tailored for the emerging scatterometer application on ice and land. the asps project is now in a pre-operational phase and the scope of the paper is to give to the scientific community an overview of the asps system. those new data, available in the next years, hopefully will help the scientific community to better understand and monitor the earth's climate changes and to protect our environment