The Sensitivity of a Global Ocean Model to Wind Forcing: A Test Using Sea Level and Wind Observations From Satellites and Operational Analysis

• Main Authors: And Chao Jet, Lee-lueng Fu, Yi Chao
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.30.5803; http://techreports.jpl.nasa.gov/1997/97-0170.pdf

Investigated in this study is the response of a global ocean general circulation model to forcing provided by two wind products: operational analysis from the National Center for Environmental Prediction observations made by the 1 radar The sea level simulated by the model using the two wind fields is compared to the observations made by the radar altimeter for a period of two years, The focus of the analysis is placed on the large-scale ocean variabilities at mid arid high latitudes. The sea level simulations resulting from the are found to be closer to the observations over most of the global oceans. The improvement due to the 1 wind is most pronounced in the Southern Ocean, where the sea level variabilities are primarily caused by large-scale motions driven by wind and the improvement can be as large as 10 cm. This is also the place where conventional wind observaticms are scarcest, leading to poor operational analysis. Other areas of appreciable improvement include the western and .