Development of scatterometer-derived surface pressures for the Southern Ocean

• Main Authors: Kyle A. Hilburn, Mark A. Bourassa, James J. O’brien
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: General; Remote sensing and electromagnetic processes (0689; KEYWORDS; scatterometer; surface pressure; variational techniques; Southern Ocean; SeaWinds; QuikSCAT
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.533.4208; http://images.remss.com/papers/qscat/Hilburn_JGR_2003.pdf

[1] High-resolution, research-quality surface pressures are objectively calculated over the Southern Ocean using winds derived from the SeaWinds scatterometer on the QuikSCAT satellite. The pressure fields are validated in comparison to in situ observations. Overall, the scatterometer-derived surface pressures are a small improvement over the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis, which is used as the objective technique’s background field. This improvement is understated primarily because the comparison data undersample storms. Instances are found where the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis misses storms entirely and the scatterometer-derived pressures are a large