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

Abstract

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 reliability 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