Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

DOI

10.1002/essoar.10506276.1

Publication Title

ESS Open Archive

Pages

1-19

Abstract

Strong winds in Southern Ocean storms drive air-sea carbon and heat fluxes. These fluxes are integral to the global climate system and the wind speeds that drive them are increasing. The current scatterometer constellation measuring vector winds remotely undersamples these storms and the higher winds within them, leading to potentially large biases in Southern Ocean wind reanalyses and the fluxes that derive from them. This observing system design study addresses these issues in two ways. First, we describe an addition to the scatterometer constellation, called Southern Ocean Storms -- Zephyr, to increase the frequency of independent observations, better constraining high winds. Second, we show that potential reanalysis wind biases over the Southern Ocean lead to uncertainty over the sign of the net winter carbon flux. More frequent independent observations per day will capture these higher winds and reduce the uncertainty in estimates of the global carbon and heat budgets.

Comments

This is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Data may be preliminary.

Manuscript in preparation for submission to Geophysical Research Letters

Data Availability

Article states: "The B-SOSE Iteration 133 output used in this analysis is available at Scripps Institution of Oceanography: http://sose.ucsd.edu/BSOSE6_iter133_solution.html."

Original Publication Citation

Russell, J. L., Long, D. G., Chang, P., Cowell, M., Curchitser, E., Dinniman, M. S., Fellows, C., Goodman, P., Hofmann, E., Jelenak, Z., Klinck, J., Krasting, J. P., Lovenduski, N. S., Lofverstrom, M., Mazloff, M. R., Petroy, S., Polit, A., Rodriguez, E., Schofield, O., . . . Zeng, X. (2021). Measuring winds from space to reduce the uncertainty in the Southern Ocean carbon fluxes: Science requirements and proposed mission. ESS Open Archive, 1-19. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/essoar.10506276.1

ORCID

0000-0001-7519-9278 (Dinniman), 0000-0001-6710-4371 (Hofmann), 0000-0003-4312-5201 (Klinck)

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Climate Commons

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