Evaluation of Reanalysis and Satellite-Based Sea Surface Winds Using In
Situ Measurements from Chinese Antarctic Expeditions
Ming Li1, Jiping Liu2 and Jun Yu3
National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center, Beijing 100081, China
2 State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China
3 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Vermont,
Burlington, VT, 05401, USA E-mail: jun.yu@uvm.edu
1
Sea surface wind is sensitive to the air-sea interaction and affects the sea surface
turbulent fluxes. Sea surface winds from NCEP-2, ERA40 reanalysis data and satellite
sea winds from QuikSCAT and NCDC blended sea winds are evaluated by using the
in situ measurements obtained from the Chinese Antarctic Expeditions for the period
1989-2006, with emphasis on the Southern Ocean. Compared to the ship observations,
the reanalysis sea winds are both have a positive bias, and the positive bias is more
pronounced in the Southern Ocean. The two satellite winds also show positive biases.
The QuikSCAT wind shows larger biases relative to NCDC blended sea winds.
In addition, we compare the reanalysis (NCEP-2/ERA40) with the NCDC wind. By
the comparison of the northern winter in 2001, it suggests that the NCEP-2 wind is
lager than the NCDC wind in the Southern Ocean, but smaller in the central tropical.
And the ERA wind has a weaker positive bias in the Southern Ocean but is smaller in
most other areas.
In summary, both the reanalysis and satellite winds have a larger bias in the
Southern Ocean. So it is necessary and important to improve the inversion approach,
especially in the high latitude.