Exploring the Characteristics of Ocean Surface Winds at High Resolution With Doppler Scatterometry

Abstract

Abstract Ocean wind plays a fundamental role in the Earth's climate system by transporting heat, moisture, and gases globally while mediating their exchange with the ocean. How, and at what scales these processes occur is an active area of research, and modeling studies suggest that the strongest vertical transport and air‐sea exchanges occur at small scales. This paper introduces results from the S‐MODE campaign, during which a Doppler Scatterometer mapped 2D ocean vector wind on scales between 200 m and 100 km. While in an average sense, DopplerScatt wind data match classical k−5/3 spectra, atmospheric rolls, convection, and underlying ocean currents all drive unique wind spectra that are inconsistent with the average. Frequent observations of strong atmospheric divergence imply small‐scale vertical transport reaching >10 km/day. These results are not consistent with Kolmogorov and two‐dimensional turbulence theories due to anisotropy and divergence.

Keywords

• winds
• currents
• air‐sea interactions
• atmospheric dynamics
• divergence
• transport