The near-inertial wind work and near-inertial internal waves (NIWs) in the ocean have been extensively studied using ocean general circulation models (OGCMs) forced by 6-hourly winds or wind stress obtained from atmospheric reanalysis data. However, the OGCMs interpolate the reanalysis winds or wind stress linearly onto each time step, which partially filters out the wind stress variance in the near-inertial band. In this study, the influence of the linear interpolation on the near-inertial

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... work and NIWs is quantified using an eddy-resolving ( 1 /108) primitive equation ocean model. In addition, a new interpolation method is proposedthe sinc-function interpolation-that overcomes the shortages of the linear interpolation. It is found that the linear interpolation of 6-hourly winds significantly underestimates the near-inertial wind work and NIWs at the midlatitudes. The underestimation of the near-inertial wind work and near-inertial kinetic energy is proportional to the loss of near-inertial wind stress variance due to the linear interpolation. This further weakens the diapycnal mixing in the ocean due to the reduced near-inertial shear variance. Compared to the linear interpolation, the sinc-function interpolation retains all the wind stress variance in the near-inertial band and yields correct magnitudes for the near-inertial wind work and NIWs at the midlatitudes. FIG. 10. The latitudal distribution of r W , r Q , and r S , which are defined as the ratio of zonal-mean W I , Q I , and S I in R-Linear (blue) or R-Sinc (red) to that in R-Control, respectively. Here Q I and S I are vertically averaged within 0-300 m. The gray dashed line denotes the frequency response function R L ( f ) associated with the linear interpolation. The authors greatly regret that the acknowledgments section in Jing et al. (2015) neglected to give proper credit to the model development team and to the intellectual work behind the model simulation, and they wish to add the following acknowledgments. The authors sincerely apologize for the serious oversight on their part.