An objective analysis technique has been developed to produce in-situ based fields
of surface turbulent fluxes (momentum, latent heat, and sensible heat fluxes) and
the fields used to create the fluxes (vector wind, scalar wind, near-surface air
temperature and humidity, and SST). This third generation FSU product moves beyond
our past production of wind-only fields. The surface winds in the FSU products have
been widely used in ocean modeling and ENSO prediction. The current objective
approach treats the various types of observations (volunteer observing ships (VOS),
moored buoys, drifting buoys) as independent, and objectively determines weights for
each type of observation. Objectively derived uncertainties for these products will
be released in the near future.
The FSU fluxes provide a new set of ocean surface forcing fields which are
well suited to aid in understanding the
global climate system and hence useful
for climate prediction.
Our long-term monthly fields are well suited for seasonal to decadal studies, and
our related hybrid satellite and numerical weather prediction (NWP) fields are ideal
for daily to annual variability and quality assessment of the monthly products.
