Spatial and Temporal Propagation of Scatterometer Winds

Ocean models are generally forced by synthetic (global) NWP model wind fields. It has however been shown that these fields lack mesoscale wind structures on scales below 500 km, i.e., on the ocean eddy scale. Also, compared to wind
observations, NWP model wind fields have persistent wind direction biases and lack response to SST gradients or air-sea temperature difference.
Based on Kolmogorov turbulence theory it is well known that the wind in the boundary layer has a kinetic energy spectrum with wave number power slope
of −5/3 in mesoscales. It is a very important property and preservation of this property in dynamical models can significantly improve ocean forcing. The scatterometers nowadays provide a very accurate measurement of wind over the ocean and the retrieved winds contain the mesoscale structures consistent with the Kolmogorov theory. The scatterometer winds are available over the ocean only at specific times. We present our attempt to propagate the physically correct scatterometer winds both in time and space and provide a uniform wind forcing over the ocean.