SAF Official Service Name

Satellite Application Facility on Ocean and Sea Ice (OSI SAF)

OSI SAF website

SAF Objectives

The OSI SAF is an answer to requirements, from the meteorological and oceanographic communities of EUMETSAT Member and Cooperating States, for comprehensive information derived from meteorological satellites at the ocean-atmosphere interface. The OSI SAF offers a precious complement to in-situ data, based on continuously increasing temporal and geographical resolution products from coastal to global coverage.

It takes into account, in particular, the requirements expressed in the framework of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE GHRSST-PP), and, finally, Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and its Large Integrated Project MyOcean.

SAF Leader and Consortium

Leading Entity
	Météo-France (M-F), France

Consortium Members
	Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer (IFREMER), France		Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), Denmark		Norwegian Meteorological Institute (Met.no), Norway
	Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), The Netherlands

SAF Phases

Development Phase: April 1997–June 2002
Initial Operations Phase: July 2002–February 2007
Continuous Development and Operations Phase: March 2007–February 2012
Second Continuous Development and Operations Phase: March 2012–February 2017

SAF input satellite data

The following satellite data sources are used to generate OSI SAF products:

• MSG (SEVIRI)
• GOES-E imager
• Metop (AVHRR, ASCAT)
• NOAA (AVHRR)
• DMSP (SSM/I, SSMIS)
• Soumi NPP (VIIRS)
• OSCAT

SAF products

The OSI SAF develops, processes and distributes, in near-real time, products related to four key parameters of the ocean-atmosphere interface. Products are accessible on local FTP servers with flexible extraction interface, EUMETCast, and UMARF. See the Product Navigator for detailed information on the OSI SAF products.

The OSISAF also provides climatological datasets (such as Sea ice concentration) accessible via the OSI SAF website.

SAF topology and architecture

The production is based on three sub-systems:

• The Sub-System 1 (SS1) under M-F/CMS responsibility, with the cooperation of Met.no and DMI for the high latitude processing, addresses the SST and radiative fluxes products. IFREMER contributes to the products distribution and archiving.
• The Sub-System 2 (SS2) under Met.no responsibility, with the cooperation of DMI, addresses the sea ice products.
• The Sub-System 3 (SS3), under KNMI responsibility, addresses the wind products.

SAF user community

Main usages of the OSI SAF products are: operational weather forecasting; operational marine meteorology; operational oceanography; polar research; research in meteorology and oceanography; climate monitoring, and environment monitoring.