Impact of improved wind fields on ocean-atmopshere heat fluxes in the tropical Pacific

We examine the impact of using improved wind fields (from the NASA scatterometer QuikSCAT) on estimates of the sensible and latent heat fluxes determined both from bulk formulae and from an atmospheric boundary layer model developped by Seager et al. (1995). The assessment of the effect of scatterometer winds is provided by comparisons with heat fluxes produced by the National Center for Environmental Predictions (NCEP) AGCM and by running the NCEP winds through the same algorithms.

Important differences are expected both because of the increased spatial resolution of the scatterometer winds which results in more accurate representation of important features such as the ITCZ, and due to the fact that, unlike most wind products, scatterometer winds are measured relative to ocean currents (Kelly et al., manuscript submitted to Geophysical Research Letters, 2000).

Some implications and consequences of inaccuracies in the heat fluxes for the upper ocean thermodynamics and circulation are examined.