Objectives
Ocean Heat Flux project is aimed at obtaining and analyzing all heat flux components (turbulent and radiative) over the global ocean using multiple satellite sensors in combination with in situ measurements and numerical model analyses. The fluxes will be generated daily and monthly for the 20-year (1992-2011) period, for the ice-free ocean between 80°N and 80°S and at spatial resolution ranging between 0.5° and 0.25° in longitude and latitude.
The project results will meet the scientific community requirements relied on the estimation and the improvement of long time series of ocean heat flux. The former have been reported as recommendations and priorities by several scientific programs such as CLIVAR and WCRP.
The main objectives of the Ocean Heat Flux project are:
- Determination of accuracy of existing satellite and NWP fluxes through direct pointwise comparisons with selected high accurate flux measurements such as derived from OCEANSITE and from dedicated experiments.
- Characterization of flux accuracy depending on atmospheric and oceanic conditions.
- Investigation of the impact of uncertainties of input variables and bulk parameterizations on the flux accuracy.
- Determination of the effect of spatial and temporal sampling on the resulting flux quality at global and regional scales.
- Development of an innovative ensemble approach to generate multiple realizations of EO based flux products. It should combine the existing data sets, the latest improvements in bulk formulations and associated input data, and the most recent efforts in the climate quality (e.g. ESA CCI) re-processing of EO data.
- Assessment of the new flux quality based on the comparison with in-situ data.
- Development of Web-based interfaces to facilitate access to daily averaged and higher resolution heat fluxes and meteorological state variables from mooring sites and satellites.