Ocean and Sea Ice (OSI SAF)

Data on ocean and atmosphere interactions

The OSI SAF provides comprehensive information on the ocean-atmosphere interface — requirements of both meteorology and oceanography.

Last Updated

09 May 2022

Published on

24 June 2020

Satellite Application Facility on Ocean and Sea Ice (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), Group for High Resolution Sea Surface temperature (GHRSST), and the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS).

SAF leader and consortium

Leading entity

Météo-France, France

Consortium members

Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer (IFREMER), France

Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), Denmark

Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Norway

Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), The Netherlands

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
Third Continuous Development and Operations Phase: March 2017–February 2022

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

MSG 0° and over Indian Ocean (SEVIRI), then MTG (FCI)
GOES-East (ABI)
Metop (AVHRR, ASCAT, IASI), then Metop-SG (METimage, MWI, SCA, IASI-NG)
NPP/NOAA (VIRRS)
DMSP (SSMR, SSM/I, SSMIS)
ScatSat (OSCAT)
ISS (RapidScat)
GCOM-W (AMSR-2)
Oceansat-2 (OSCAT)
QuickSCAT (SeaWinds)
ERS (SCAT)

R&D and operations activities are shared among the consortium.

The production and associated services are based on three subsystems:

Low and Mid latitude (LML) subsystem, under MF responsibility, processes and distributes the SST and Radiative Fluxes products covering LML, North Atlantic Regional (NAR) and Global areas. Ifremer contributes to the products distribution and archiving.
High Latitude (HL) subsystem, under Norwegian Meteorological Institute responsibility, with the co-operation of DMI, processes and distributes the Global Sea Ice products, the High Latitude SST and the High Latitude Radiative Fluxes.
Wind subsystem, under KNMI responsibility, processes and distributes the wind products.

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.

OSI SAF products

All OSI SAF products

Related SAF pages

Satellite Application Facilities (SAFs)

Utilising specialist expertise from the Member States, Satellite Application Facilities (SAFs) are dedicated centres of excellence for processing satellite data.