Contains monthly averaged ocean surface wind stress derived from Seasat-A Scatterometer (SASS) wind retrievals, from July 1978 until October 1978, gridded on a 2.5-degree by 2.5 degree global grid. The vector average wind stress is stored in units of dynes per centimeter squared (dyn/cm^2). Data is provided in formatted ASCII text. The primary data set used to construct these wind stress fields consists of 96 days of SASS vector winds supplied by Robert Atlas at GSFC. The directional ambiguities in the raw SASS data had been objectively removed using the GSFC Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences atmospheric general circulation model.