83rd Annual

Wednesday, 12 February 2003
Global pressure fields from scatterometer winds
Jerome Patoux, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; and R. C. Foster and R. A. Brown
Poster PDF (111.8 kB)
A method is presented for computing global surface pressure fields from satellite scatterometer winds. Pressure gradients are estimated using a two-layer similarity planetary boundary layer model in the midlatitudes and a mixed layer model in the Tropics. A global pressure field is then fit to the pressure gradients by least-square optimization. The method is applied to a representative set of swaths and tested against TAO buoy data and surface analyses.

Supplementary URL: http://pbl.atmos.washington.edu