Objective analysis of pseudostress over the Indian Ocean using a direct-minimization approach

Abstract

A variational approach is used to develop an objective analysis technique which produces monthly average 1-deg pseudostress vector fields over the Indian Ocean. Results from various weight combinations are presented for the months of January and July 1984 and the results examined in terms of these selections. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons to the subjective analysis are made to find which weight combination provides the best results. It was found that the weight on the second term balances the influence of the original (first-guess) field and climatology. The smoothing term weight determines how wide an area deviations of the first guess from climatology is affected. The weights on the kinematic terms are fine-tuning parameters. -from Authors