These are the satellite composites used to create the Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs, also known as ‘cloud drift winds’) over the North Pole region and South Pole region.

The 'composites' directory contains the specialize satellite composite imagery created from both low Earth orbiting (LEO) and geostationary (GEO) satellites, known as LEOGEO composites. The file names are labeled as: Ayydddhhmmss.gz where yy is the last two digits of the year, ddd is the day of the year, hh is the hour, mm is the minutes, ss is the seconds. These McIDAS AREA files are gzipped compressed.

The 'winds archive' directory contains the same composites in Man computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS) Meteorological Data or MD format using the GWIN schema (see more here http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/iwwg/Docs/windcoug.pdf). These are derived from specialize satellite composite imagery using both low Earth orbiting (LEO) and geostationary (GEO) satellites, since the product is known as LEOGEO AMVs. The file names are labeled as: WIND.xx.Dyyddd.Thhmm00.gz where xx is the polar region, SP for South Pole region and NP for North Pole region, yy is the last two digits of the year, ddd is the day of the year, hh is the hour, and mm is the minutes. The files are gzipped compressed (thus the file name ends in gz).