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Short‐period oceanic circulation: Implications for satellite altimetry
Author(s) -
Tierney Craig,
Wahr John,
Bryan Frank,
Zlotnicki Victor
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/1999gl010507
Subject(s) - altimeter , barotropic fluid , climatology , satellite , sea surface height , geology , sea level , latitude , dynamic height , ocean current , environmental science , wind stress , general circulation model , ocean surface topography , ocean general circulation model , geodesy , oceanography , climate change , physics , astronomy , hydrography
Atmospherically forced, high‐frequency oceanic variability is investigated using different configurations of an ocean general circulation model. At periods less than 20 days, the dynamic response of the sea surface to pressure loading exceeds that due to wind stress, and is mostly barotropic. Energy at these periods aliases into satellite altimeter measurements of sea surface height (SSHT). The global variance of collinear (≈10 day) differences of this modelled aliased SSHT is between (2 cm)² and (3.5cm)², depending on the model configuration used. The local variance can reach (14cm)² at some high latitude locations. We use the ocean model predictions to remove the high‐frequency signals from TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P) observations. We obtain a global variance reduction in collinear differences of up to (2cm)², about 7% of the T/P signal. Our model has difficulty in predicting the variability at periods less than 5 days.