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Validation of tropical ocean‐atmosphere heat fluxes‐from marine data against a satellite‐based method
Author(s) -
Michael K. J.,
Nunez M.,
Meyers G.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/joc.3370140407
Subject(s) - environmental science , satellite , atmosphere (unit) , climatology , heat flux , sea surface temperature , atmospheric sciences , humidity , mesoscale meteorology , meteorology , heat transfer , geology , geography , physics , aerospace engineering , engineering , thermodynamics
Ocean‐atmosphere heat fluxes were calculated from marine weather reports over a mesoscale region of the Coral Sea near Townsville, Australia. These heat fluxes were compared, as 5‐week averages, with a set of heat fluxes derived over the same region from a combination of satellite and surface data. These satellite‐ and surface‐derived fluxes were calibrated and validated against accurate, independent surface heat fluxes, as described in a previous paper. Significant differences were noted between the two sets of heat fluxes. The discrepancies in the net solar radiation are attributed to insufficient marine weather reports and/or improper cloud parameterization in the formulae applied to the marine data. Some large differences were observed in the outgoing turbulent heat fluxes, and these were traced to higher water‐air specific humidity gradients in the marine data. These two discrepancies cancel so that the long‐term (45 week) averages of the total ocean‐atmosphere heat flux, at 52 W m −2 for the satellite‐based technique and 34 W m −2 for the shipboard method, differ by only 18 W m −2 . On the basis of these systematic differences it was concluded that the heat fluxes derived from satellite and surface data in this study were superior in quality and reliability to heat fluxes calculated from marine weather reports. Further studies are required to test this result in other locations.