[ROLSS] GERB data release

[Steven Dewitte]

Dear GERB data user,

We are pleased to announce the first release of GERB data useable for 
scientific studies.  From today onwards the near real time data processing 
for GERB on MSG-1 will be frozen.  The near real time data will be called 
version 3 (V003) and will be available for ARG, BARG and SHI products.

A quality assesment of the ARG products has been made, and the results are
currently being documented into a Quality summary document. This will be
available in 40 days along with updated userguides, at which time an
edition 1 climate data set release of the Level 2 ARG and Level 1.5 NANRG
products will be made from the GGSPS archive
(http://ggsps.rl.ac.uk). 

Users must ensure they have read this Quality summary document before
drawing scientific conclusions from the data, or submitting publications
using the data for peer review. Agreement to this is implicit in access to 
either the near real time or climate archive GERB products. 

Edition 1 data will appear in the archive after a 40 day validation
period, that will ensure any products with obvious artefacts are excluded
from the climate archive. Intially Edition 1 data will only be available
for level 2 ARG products and level 1.5 NANRG products.

Edition 1 data will be reprocessed backwards in time back to mid 2003.  
Currently we expect to reprocess two months of data in one calendar month.

To assure the smooth transition for automated programs using the GERB data, 
the production of the version 2 (V02) data will be continued during at least 
one week in its normal 'G2' directory and using the normal HDF5 library.  
The level 3 is produced in a parallel directory 'G2_V003' with an updated 
subdirectory structure.  The new subdirectory names are easier to understand 
then the old ones.
The level 3 products are written using the new HDF5 library, version 1.6.5.
After the transition period the old directory 'G2' will dissapear and the 
directory 'G2_V003' will be renamed to 'G2'. 
 
Best regards,
 
GERB Project team