One year of satellite and meteorologica data over the Mediterranean on CD Rom

MEDIAS-FRANCE is currently developing a database gathering a set of parameters covering the whole Mediterranean Sea and derived from space measurements and meteorological models. to the international oceanographic community working on this region and reserved for a scientific use, this product will be distributed at the marginal reproduction cost.

The first version of this database covers the whole 1994 and includes the following parameters:

- sea surface temperature and thermal fronts (daily synthesis) derived from NOAA/AVHRR by the Centre de Météorologie Spatiale (CMS) of METEO-FRANCE,

- surface solar radiation (hourly and daily values) derived from METEOSAT by CMS,

- corrected sea surface height, tide, inverse barometric effect, significant wave height and backscatter coefficient computed from TOPEX-POSEIDON data for all orbits covering the Mediterranean. Are also included in the database, for each point of an orbital cycle, the sea level deviations between the measurement acquired during a given pass and the mean value over the whole passes.

- wave significant height, backscatter coefficient, wind speed, corrected sea surface height, and a set of orbit parameters, perturbing effects corrections, and confidence index on measurements derived from ERS-1 altimeter. This values are provided by IFREMER/CERSAT for all the orbits crossing the Mediterranean.

- wind speed and direction computed for all passes of ERS-1 scatterometer and processed by IFREMER/CERSAT using two algorithms (ESA and CERSAT), with corresponding values provided by ECMWF and various quality index,

- bathymetry map of the Mediterranean derived from ERS-1 altimeter (168-day orbit) by GRGS Toulouse,

- analyses (sea surface pressure and temperature) and forecasts (air temperature, air relative humidity, 10-m wind components, rainfall, integrated surface visible and infrared radiation, integrated sensible and latent heat flux) computed from METEO-FRANCE ARPEGE meteorological model, and provided on a 0.5 grid every 6-hour,

- wave and primary swell significant height, direction and period derived from ECMWF WAM-Med model on a 0.5 grid every 6-hour.

Each CD-ROM includes an interface software allowing to extract data subsets according to various criteria (choice of geographical zone, time period and list of parameters), to display them and to copy them on the user's disk. This interface is currently working on MS-DOS systems, and will be adapted soon for UNIX systems. A set of documentation is also available on-line.

A test-version of this product has been sent to about 20 users in December 1995. Corrections and improvements which have been suggested by these users are currently implemented, so that the product will be available to the public in July 1996. It is intended to develop the same product for years before and after 1994.