Wind Fields at the Sea Surface Determined from Combined Ship and Satellite Altimeter Data

Abstract

A data processing method based on a kriging technique was developed to merge two data sources relative to wind velocity at the sea surface within a basin-scale region (the tropical Atlantic Ocean): one from in situ wind observations in a ships of opportunity network and the other from satellite measurements involving reconstructions of wind velocity from the Geosat altimeter signal. The kriging parameters used are computed and discussed. The high density of the combined ship-satellite data files allowed the integrated time step to be reduced from one month to 10 days. To illustrate the method, resulting wind velocity patterns are given for three 10-day running periods. The technique was validated at monthly and 10-day time periods by comparison with independent data processing sources involving only in situ observations or Geosat measurements. Work is now in progress to extend this method to wind vectors supplied by the scatterometer boarded an the ERS-1 satellite.