Comparison of Sea Surface Turbulent Flux Algorithms and Datasets in the Tropics and Mid-Latitudes

In the summer of 1999, an international workshop was held in Boulder, Colorado to discuss and coordinate the creation of global high-resolution datasets of turbulent sea surface fluxes derived from satellite data. Uncertainties in producing such a dataset could be caused by differences in the parameterizations used by various algorithms and the estimation of near-surface meteorological variables.

Responding to the workshop's recommendation, we have performed an intercomparison of eight algorithms used in data production as well as weather and climate prediction. The hourly fluxes computed by the algorithms and the monthly averages of the hourly fluxes were compared using data from buoys in the tropical Pacific and the mid-latitude Atlantic as a function of the following: near-surface wind speed, sea surface temperature, and air-surface potential temperature difference. In addition, algorithm fluxes were compared with observed fluxes from a platform off of the Southern California coast. Furthermore, the monthly fluxes from two widely-used datasets, one based on satellite data and the other a reanalysis dataset, were compared to the monthly averages of buoy-derived fluxes of their respective algorithms. The results of these comparisons will be presented at the Conference.