Surface flux related activities at NOAA National Climatic Data Center

Many activities at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) focus on the theme of global water and energy budgets. Over the ocean, turbulent air-sea fluxes and related variables, including wind, water temperature, and air temperature and humidity at or near the sea surface, have been produced at NCDC. This presentation analyzes these products and discusses future plans.

Surface processes are key in improving NWP & climate model forecast skills. The Surface Flux Analysis (SURFA) project is an initiative of the World Climate Research Programs (WCRP) Working Group on Numerical Experimentation (WGNE) and the Working Group on Surface Fluxes (WGSF). The ultimate objective of SURFA is to facilitate the evaluation of near real-time Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model fluxes and related fields, over both land and ocean, against high quality reference data. NCDC has been serving as the SURFA central archive and service.