Impact of Global Ocean Flux Product, J-OFURO3

Dear Colleagues,

Ocean fluxes through the sea surface, such as momentum, heat, and freshwater, are key factors when it comes to understanding the air–sea interaction mechanism in oceanic and atmospheric studies. Gridded products covering the global ocean in space and some decades in time have been used not only for investigations of variabilities in multitime scales but also as driving parameters of OGCM simulations.

Derivations of these surface fluxes require data of various types of surface meteorological parameters, such as wind, air and sea temperatures, and humidity. Traditionally, these have been derived from surface meteorological measurement data on research vessels and merchant ships over the ocean. However, ship measurements have been crucial problems due to inhomogeneous coverages depending on shipping routes and insufficient reliability. Alternatively, since 1990, satellite remote sensing technology has permitted us to construct gridded products of surface fluxes covering over the global ocean. A typical example is the Japanese Ocean Flux Data Sets with Use of Remote Sensing Observations (J-OFURO). Its first version of this product (Kubota et al., 2002) involving heat flux components (radiation and turbulent fluxes) and momentum fluxes did not cover the whole global ocean, and its second one (J-OFURO2) (Tomita et al., 2010) provided global surface net heat flux and near-global momentum flux in 1988–2008. The new version (J-OFURO3) was released (Tomita et al., 2019) and has been available on their website (http://j-ofuro.isee.nagoya-u.ac.jp). The product consists of short- and long-wave radiations and latent and sensible fluxes, momentum, and freshwater fluxes over the global ocean and has a higher spatial resolution of 0.25 x 0.25^o grids than those in the previous version (1.0 x 1.0 ^o). These flux products have been estimated from data which are measured by multi-satellites (microwave radiometer and scatterometer, etc.). 

Global products of ocean surface fluxes have also been developed via other data sources and/or procedures such as atmospheric re-analyses (ERA, NCEP, JRA) and blends of re-analysis data and satellite observations (CORE, CCMP). They should be validated by comparisons with in situ measurements by moored buoys and intercomparisons among them, because uncertainties in flux estimations affect reliabilities in heat and freshwater balances through the sea surface and also govern the reproducibilities of OGCM simulated fields.

This Special Issue is focused on the impacts of global ocean flux products which are typically characterized by J-OFURO3. Some of the potential topics include:

• Validations of different products based on satellite observations, numerical re-analyses, and their blend via comparisons with in situ measurements and their intercomparisons;
• Uncertainties of some parameters used in derivations of surface fluxes and their problems;
• Variabilities of surface fluxes for various time scales from synoptic to interannual ranges;
• Usefulness of surface fluxes as driving forces of OGCM simulations.

Dr. Kunio Kutsuwada
Guest Editor

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• Turbulent flux
• Radiation flux
• Momentum flux
• Freshwater flux
• Microwave radiometer
• Microwave scatterometer