Impact Of Seawinds Scatterometer Data On Ocean Surface Analysis And Weather Prediction

• Main Authors: Atlas, R., Bloom, S. C., Ardizzone, J., Brin, E., Terry, J., Yu, T-W.
• Other Authors: NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION GREENBELT MD GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: Optics; *SCATTEROMETERS; SURFACE ANALYSIS; SYMPOSIA; INFORMATION SYSTEMS; WIND; METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITES; WEATHER FORECASTING; STORMS; VELOCITY; OCEAN SURFACE; SEAWINDS SCATTEROMETERS AND QUICKSCAT SATELLITES; COMPONENT REPORTS; Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA497826; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA497826

Scatterometer observations of the ocean surface wind speed and direction improve the depiction and prediction of storms at sea. These data are especially valuable where observations are otherwise sparse?mostly in the Southern Hemisphere and tropics, but also on occasion in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. The SeaWinds scatterometer on the QuikScat satellite was launched in June 1999 and it represents a dramatic departure in design from the other scatterometer instruments launched during the past decade (ERS-1,2 and NSCAT). More details on the Sea- Winds instrument can be found in [1] and [2]. At the time of this writing, SeaWinds scatterometer data from the ADEOS 2 satellite are not yet available . Therefore this paper will be limited to results from the SeaWinds scatterometer on Quikscat. This presentation shows the influence of QuikScat data in data assimilation systems both from the NASA Data Assimilation Office (GEOS-3) and from NCEP (GDAS). See also ADM002146. Presented at Oceans 2003 MTS/IEEE Conference, held in San Diego, California on September 22-26, 2003 and published in proceedings of the same, p1598-1601. ISBN 0-933957-31-9. U.S. Government or Federal Purpose Rights License, The original document contains color images.