Gridded wind fields derived from scatterometer, altimeter, and SSM/I wind measurements
- IFREMER, Plouzane (France)
The sea surface wind is an important variable in the study of the interactions between ocean and atmosphere. Wind over the ocean modulates air-sea fluxes of heat, moisture, gases and particulates, thus regulating the crucial coupling between atmosphere and ocean that establishes and maintains global and regional climates. In this paper, the authors are concerned with three instruments which provide an estimate of the wind speed over the sea surface at different scales. The scatterometer, which is a dedicated wind instrument, and the altimeter are mounted on the ERS-1 satellite. The third instrument is the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) which is deployed on board the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP) satellites F10 and F11. The main aim of the use of the derived wind speed from these three instruments is to compute an accurate regularly wind field over an ocean region with high space and time resolution which will be used to force an ocean circulation model. Furthermore, the combination of passive and active microwave satellite instruments yields new insights into the study of some atmospheric systems as the evolution of fronts and tropical cyclones. The authors will present the quality of the altimeter and SSM/I wind speed estimates by comparison with wind speeds derived from the ERS-1 scatterometer. They will discuss the results of the intercomparison between the winds inferred from the three sensors along with colocated buoy wind measurements.
- OSTI ID:
- 467703
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9409461--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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