Seawinds level 2 data is acquired at DMI from NOAA/NESDIS in BUFR format and is archived routinely. Until around April 2002, the data was archived on CDROM's, and after that it has been archived in the DMI mass storage system. It turned out that the CDROM archive for 2001 and 2002 had one large gap and therefore it has been decided to order Seawinds level 2A data on tapes from the JPL PODAAC for the total period 2001-2002. This data is in HDF format and is described in the QuikSCAT Science Data Product User's Manual available at: ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/ocean_wind/quikscat/doc/QSUG4-4.pdf.
Unpacking binaries for both BUFR and HDF can be provided for SUN and Linux. The total volume of the 2001-2002 data is 73 GB.
[excerpt from Phase 1 report for Part 4, DMI] C. Melsheimer, Last modified: Thu May 15 16:15:45 CEST 2003