Abstract
Accurate estimation of satellite-derived ocean latent heat flux (LHF) at high spatial resolution remains a major challenge. Here, we estimate monthly ocean LHF at 4 km spatial resolution over 5 years using bulk algorithm COARE 3.0, driven by satellite data and meteorological variables from reanalysis. We validated the estimated ocean LHF by multiyear observations and by comparison with seven ocean LHF products. Validation results from monthly observations at 96 widely distributed buoy sites from three buoy site arrays (TAO, PIRATA, and RAMA) indicated a bias of less than 7 W/m2 with R2 of more than 0.80 (p<0.01) and with a King–Gupta efficiency (KGE) of over 0.84. Our estimated ocean LHF also performs well in simulating annual variability and predicting between-site variability, as indicated by a bias of lower than 6 W/m2 and an R2 of more than 0.84 (p<0.01). Overall, the average KGE for estimated ocean LHF increased by 18%–23% compared to other LHF products, indicating robust LHF estimation performance. Importantly, our estimated annual ocean LHF has similar global spatial distribution compared to other LHF products, although there are general differences in LHF values due to the difference in the models and the spatial resolution.
Highlights
Ocean latent heat flux (LHF) plays an important role in exchanges of energy and water at the interface of the atmosphere and ocean
We applied the bulk aerodynamic Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) 3.0 model driven by many bulk variables (i.e., Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sea surface temperature (SST) with 4 km spatial resolution, Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer–EOS (AMSR-E) wind speed, specific humidity, and air temperature obtained from ERA-Interim) to estimate monthly ocean LHF from 2003 to 2007
To evaluate the performance of the COARE 3.0 model, we validated our estimated global ocean LHF using buoy data collected from 96 buoy sites from 3 buoy site arrays (TAO, PIRATA, and RAMA)
Summary
Ocean latent heat flux (LHF) plays an important role in exchanges of energy and water at the interface of the atmosphere and ocean. Most existing satellite-based global ocean LHF products are derived from bulk method with meteorological quantities, such as the Goddard Satellite-Based Surface Turbulent Fluxes (GSSTF), the Hamburg Ocean-Atmosphere Parameters and Fluxes from Satellite Data (HOAPS), and the Japanese Ocean Flux Data Sets with Use of Remote Sensing Observations (J-OFURO). To evaluate these turbulent flux products, Bourras [11] compared five satellite-based products of ocean LHF with the observed data from 75 moored buoys, but validation results demonstrated that the J-OFURO, HOAPS-2, Bourras–Eymard–Liu (BEL) dataset, and GSSTF-2 satellite products had moderate systematic errors; in addition, the Jones Fluxes product had a large systematic deviation with respect to Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) data. Later studies [14,15,16] showed the demand of accurate ocean surface LHF with
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