Frequently asked questions

  • Is there any fee for the OSI SAF products ? Can I use the data for commercial purposes ?

    All intellectual property rights of the OSI SAF products belong to EUMETSAT. The use of these products is granted to every interested user, free of charge. If you wish to use these products, EUMETSAT's copyright credit must be shown by displaying the words "copyright (year) EUMETSAT" on each of the products used.

    The OSI SAF products can be used for commercial purposes.

  • Which tools can I use to visualise OSI SAF products?

    To discover the products you can use the quicklooks available for most of the products (see on each product page). You can also use the tool Naiad : https://cersat.ifremer.fr/fr/Tools-Services/Software/Naiad
    If you have downloaded NetCDF files, you can use the following graphical interfaces :

    Panoply : can be downloaded from https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/
    Ncview a bit old but still useful : https://cirrus.ucsd.edu/ncview/

    A more advanced (programming oriented) way, would be using python:
    There is a good guide here http://unidata.github.io/netcdf4-python/
    Pyresample is also a posibility (https://pyresample.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

  • What are the data formats provided by OSI SAF ?

    It depends on the product : all of them are available in NetCDF (NetCDF-3 or NetCDF-4 depending on the product). Winds products are also distributed in BUFR which is needed for numerical weather prediction. Some products are currently provided in GRIB and HDF5 but this will stop.  Please go on each product page to see which format is available for each product.

  • How can I get information on changes in the products, disruptions etc.?

    News and status messages concerning our products and services are provided via our Service messages. You need to register on the web site to subscribe to the service messages in you domain of interest.

  • How can I contact the responsible scientist for product xy?

    By filling the helpdesk form (after having registered on the web site). Your request will be sent to the right person.

  • How can I give feedback or report problems to OSI SAF?

    By filling the helpdesk form (after having registered on the web site).

  • I am looking for archived data. Where can I find them ?

    Please go to our "Access to data" web page to find our near-real time and archive dissemination means. If you have a specific request, do not hesitate to contact us.

  • How should I cite OSI SAF products ?

    The OSI SAF products should be cited as following:

    EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility, <product name> <product available period> (v<version>, <release year>), <identifiers>, data (for <extracted period>, <extracted domain>,) extracted on <download date> from the <distributor/distribution mean>

    where

    <product name>: fully spelled out product name, identical to the name in PRD and on OSI SAF web site
    <product available period>: full period when the product is available, can be YYYY-onwards for NRT
    <version>: especially for CDR and ICDR
    <release year>: year when the CDR was released or when the NRT/ICDR was declared operational
    <identifiers>: OSI SAF identifier OSI-xxx-y, DOI, ...
    <extracted period>: time period to describe the part used from the original data set
    <extracted domain>: area to describe the part used from the original data set
    <download date>: when the dataset was retrieved
    <distributor/distribution mean>: If the product is redistributed, name of the distributor + URL. If the product is distributed by the OSI SAF, please specify the distribution mean: EUMETCast, OSI SAF FTP server (with the URL) or the EUMETSAT archive.

    Notes:
    • the version and release year are only needed for CDRs and ICDRs (not for NRT products)
    • the “extracted period” and “extracted domain” are only needed if a subset of the data is being used. The content within angle brackets “<…>” is to be replaced with whatever period, domain, or download date is relevant to the data being used.

    Below are two examples of citations, the first one citing a full dataset and the second one citing a subset of the dataset:
    EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility, Global sea ice concentration climate data record 1979-2015 (v2.0, 2017), OSI-450, doi: 10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0008, data extracted on 2020-11-08 from the Copernicus Climate Change Service Climate Data Store, https://cds.climate.copernicus.

    EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility, Global sea ice concentration climate data record 1979-2015 (v2.0, 2017), OSI-450, doi: 10.15770/EUM_SAF_OSI_0008, data for 2010-2015, Northern Hemisphere, extracted on 2020-11-08 from the Copernicus Climate Change Service Climate Data Store, https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cds

     

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