(Note: the Japanese ADEOS-II mission was renamed to Midori-2 in mid-2003, though ADEOS-II is used in this site for historical reasons.) SeaWinds on ADEOS-II and SeaWinds on QuikSCAT are identical instruments and have been carefully cross-calibrated. The orbit phasing is such that they observe the same location at different local-times of day, however.

The wide swath and frequent overflights permit generation of a wide variety of SeaWinds Image products. For highest possible spatial resolution, multiple orbit passes are combined. These are the 'all pass' images. Since generally orbit passes of a given point on the Earth occur at nearly the same time of day, time-of-day studies are facilitated by computing images from ascending (morning) passes only, and descending (evening) passes only. For improved temporal resolution in the polar regions, daily local-time-of-day images have been generated.

Images are made both from the SeaWinds on ADEOS-II "egg" backscatter measurements and from the "slice" measurements. Generally, slice measurements yield higher spatial resolution but are noiser than egg measurements. The nominal image pixel resolution for egg images is 4.45 km/pixel while the nominal image pixel resolution for slice images is 2.225 km/pixel.

Further information is available in the QuikSCAT/SeaWinds Enhanced Resolution Image Users Notes.