HR: 0800h
AN: OS41D-0503    [Abstracts]
TI: An improved QuikSCAT weekly wind speed data set for coastal and high latitude applications
AU: * Barton, A D
EM: andrew.barton@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center, 1315 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910 United States
AU: Casey, K S
EM: kenneth.casey@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center, 1315 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910 United States
AB: Accurate satellite-derived measurements of marine wind speed are necessary for a variety of oceanographic applications. The SeaWinds instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite has measured global marine winds since its launch in 1999. However, microwave backscatter from land and ice limits the coverage and utility of QuikSCAT wind speed measurements near the coast and at high latitudes. A new QuikSCAT weekly wind speed data set has been developed with several improvements that address these and other limitations of the data. The improved QuikSCAT data set includes new land and sea ice mask information adapted from the AVHRR Pathfinder sea surface temperature (SST) v5.0 and the Optimally Interpolated SST version 2 data sets, respectively. Additionally, near shore pixels originally contaminated by backscatter from land have been filled by several methods, including simple median filling, an inverse-distance weighted mean, and an objective analysis technique that considers the spatial structure of the wind speed data. The gap filling methods and QuikSCAT wind speed data were then evaluated by comparing with in situ wind speed measurements taken from near shore and open ocean buoys and marine weather stations. The improvements in the new QuikSCAT weekly wind speed data set and statistical comparison with the in situ wind stations are discussed here.
DE: 9800 GENERAL OR MISCELLANEOUS
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting