The Blended Global Sea Surface Winds products contain ocean surface wind vectors and wind stress on a global 0.25 degree grid, in multiple time resolutions of 6-hourly and monthly, with an 11-year (1995-2005) monthly climatology. Daily files from a direct average of the 6-hourly data were also produced but are not included in this archive. The period of record is July 9, 1987 to September 30, 2011 for product Version 1.2, released in July 2007. Wind speeds were generated by blending available and selected microwave and scatterometer observations using a Simple spatiotemporally weighted Interpolation (SI) method. The following satellite retrieval datasets from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) were used for Version 1.2: SSMI Version 6, TMI Version 4, QSCAT Version 3a, and AMSRE Version 5 (updated using the SSMI rain rate). The wind directions are from the NCEP-DOE Reanalysis 2 (NRA-2). The model wind directions are interpolated onto the blended wind speed grids. The 6-hourly satellite-scaled global 0.25-degree grid wind stresses are computed as: taux_s = -[(w_s/w_m)2]*taux_m tauy_s = -[(w_s/w_m)2]*tauy_m where 's' indicates satellite-scaled values and 'm' indicates NRA-2 model values interpolated to the satellite grid. Files are in netCDF format and available to users via FTP and THREDDS. A near real-time (NRT) variant of the product is generated quasi-daily to satisfy the needs of real-time users. The publicly available NRT data were replaced by the delayed-mode research quality data on a monthly basis through the end of September 2011, at which time the Seawinds production was impacted by the loss of data from the AMSR-E instrument failure. Production of the delayed-mode research products ends with the loss of AMSR-E in Version 1.2; a future version will extend beyond September 2011. The NRT products are continued after September 2011; however, this archive only includes the delayed-mode research products as the NRT data have a lower maturity rating removing the basis for archiving those data.