Global wind stress and Sverdrup circulation from the Seasat scatterometer.

Abstract

Three months of vector wind observations from the Seasat-A satellite scatterometer (SASS) were used to construct gridded fields of monthly average wind stress and wind stress curl over the global ocean. These fields were examined to identify features either poorly resolved or not present in wind stress fields constructed from conventional data. Particular attention was focused on the spatial structures in the high southern latitudes and the tropical regions. The SASS wind stress fields are compared globally with the Hellerman and Rosenstein climatological monthly average surface wind stress fields and with monthly averages of wind stress computed from contemporaneous 1000 mb wind analyses produced by the National Meterological Center. The potential for satellite scatterometry improving the present knowledge of the global wind stress field and making important contributions to ocean modelling is demonstrated by comparison of global maps of the Sverdrup circulation computed from 3-month average SASS and Hellerman and Rosenstein climatological wind stress curl fields. (from authors' abstract)