Earth Space Research Group

Global Ocean-Atmosphere Heat Exchanges using SSM/I and Other Satellite Data

OH1_SW-LHF_ESRG.
3yr_Ave_WaterVap-N-Windsp.SSMI
3yr_Ave_SST-N-Temp_Diff
OH2_LW-SE_Oberhuber
OH3_NOHG_ESRG_Oberhuber
OH_5A_Diff_NOHG
OH_5B_COADS.Overlay
OH_A2_Compare_Heat_Trans

Authors

Global Ocean-Atmosphere Heat Exchanges as calculated by Pete Peterson , D.M. Jordan, C. Gautier and T. Wang @ ESRG, UCSB

Description

The exchange of moisture and energy across the ocean-atmosphere interface exerts a strong influence on atmospheric circulation. The annual and interannual variability of these fluxes as well as ocean surface circulation are important inputs for global climate models.

Using satellite data for the three year period 1988 to 1990 we have estimated the two main components of the ocean surface heat fluxes (latent heat flux and solar radiation flux) . Employing SSM/I microwave data, monthly average air temperature, air moisture and wind speed are mapped onto a regular square grid with 1 degree resolution. Monthly SST values are provided by AVHRR. From these parameters Latent Heat Flux, LHF, is calculated.

The remaining two components ( sensible heat flux, SE, and longwave radiation, L) are obtained from long term shipboard-based climatologies in a first stage.

These four terms are used to determine the net oceanic heat gain, NOHG, for each grid cell by :

Net Oceanic Heat Gain = SW - LHF - SE - LW

Net Oceanic Heat Gain over the globe as well as over individual basins will be presented. Integrating NOHG zonally from north to south for the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans gives the heat transport for these oceans. Preliminary meridonal heat transports will be also presented and their implications will be discussed.

Visualization

Image is displayed using mapping packages in IDL (from RSI)

visualization done by Pete Peterson @ ESRG, UCSB