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Estimating the energy flux from the wind to ocean inertial motions: The sensitivity to surface wind fields
Author(s) -
Jiang Jing,
Lu Youyu,
Perrie Will
Publication year - 2005
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 - 10.1029/2005gl023289
Subject(s) - energy flux , flux (metallurgy) , geology , sensitivity (control systems) , geophysics , inertial frame of reference , wind stress , wind power , solar wind , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , environmental science , climatology , physics , plasma , astronomy , classical mechanics , materials science , metallurgy , electrical engineering , electronic engineering , quantum mechanics , engineering
The energy flux from the wind to ocean inertial motions is estimated using three wind products in comparison to the benchmark NCEP winds: (1) corrected NCEP winds, based on scatterometer measurements (Large and Yeager, 2004), increase the energy flux by 50% globally and by 30% at mid‐latitudes, (2) blended QSCAT/NCEP winds double the energy flux at mid‐latitudes, and lead to much larger increases at high latitudes and near the equator, (3) enhanced NCEP winds in the North Atlantic Ocean, through a kinematic reanalysis procedure (Swail and Cox, 2000), increase the energy flux by 30%. We conclude that estimates of the energy fluxes are quite sensitive to wind errors and spatial resolution. NCEP winds provide a lower bound estimate of wind energy flux into ocean near‐inertial motions.