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Comparison of the ocean surface vector winds from atmospheric reanalysis and scatterometer‐based wind products over the N ordic S eas and the northern N orth A tlantic and their application for ocean modeling
Author(s) -
Dukhovskoy Dmitry S.,
Bourassa Mark A.,
Petersen Guðrún Nína,
Steffen John
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: oceans
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9291
pISSN - 2169-9275
DOI - 10.1002/2016jc012453
Subject(s) - scatterometer , environmental science , climatology , mesoscale meteorology , cyclone (programming language) , wind speed , storm , meteorology , tropical cyclone , atmospheric sciences , geology , geography , field programmable gate array , computer science , computer hardware
Ocean surface vector wind fields from reanalysis data sets and scatterometer‐derived gridded products are analyzed over the Nordic Seas and the northern North Atlantic for the time period from 2000 to 2009. The data sets include the National Center for Environmental Prediction Reanalysis 2 (NCEPR2), Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), Arctic System Reanalysis (ASR), Cross‐Calibrated Multiplatform (CCMP) wind product version 1.1 and recently released version 2.0, and QuikSCAT. The goal of the study is to assess discrepancies across the wind vector fields in the data sets and demonstrate possible implications of these differences for ocean modeling. Large‐scale and mesoscale characteristics of winds are compared at interannual, seasonal, and synoptic timescales. A cyclone tracking methodology is developed and applied to the wind fields to compare cyclone characteristics in the data sets. Additionally, the winds are evaluated against observations collected from meteorological buoys deployed in the Iceland and Irminger Seas. The agreement among the wind fields is better for longer time and larger spatial scales. The discrepancies are clearly apparent for synoptic timescales and mesoscales. CCMP, ASR, and CFSR show the closest overall agreement with each other. Substantial biases are found in the NCEPR2 winds. Numerical sensitivity experiments are conducted with a coupled ice‐ocean model forced by different wind fields. The experiments demonstrate differences in the net surface heat fluxes during storms. In the experiment forced by NCEPR2 winds, there are discrepancies in the large‐scale wind‐driven ocean dynamics compared to the other experiments.