GRIDDED SURFACE WIND-STRESS PRODUCT OVER THE WORLD OCEAN CONSTRUCTED BY SATELLITE SCATTEROMETER DATA AND ITS COMPARISON WITH NWP PRODUCTS

Kunio Kutsuwada, Minoru Kasahara, Kunihiro Aoki
2004 Gayana  
Products of gridded surface wind and wind-stress vectors over the world ocean are constructed by satellite scatterometer (ERS-1/2 and Qscat/SeaWinds) data with highly temporal and spatial resolutions. Data of the ERS-1/2 and the Qscat/SeaWinds cover periods of 1992-2000 and since August 1999, respectively, and permit us to establish a long-term time series. We make validation for our products by inter-comparison with in-situ data (TAO and NDBC buoys), and find that our Qscat product has high
more » ... iability in the almost whole area around buoy locations. For areas where there are no in-situ data such as the high-latitude southern ocean, we also make inter-comparison of our products with numerical weather prediction(NWP) ones (NCEP and ECMWF). Results reveal that there are significant differences in the westerly region of 40°-60°S, suggesting that the wind-stress magnitudes calculated from the NCEP reanalysis 6-hourly product are overestimated in the high latitudes.
doi:10.4067/s0717-65382004000300006 fatcat:bjmycfx2mfhohfpn4cmoobbaca