A Climatology Atlas of Ocean Winds

From its orbit onboard the QuikSCAT satellite, the SeaWinds instrument samples 90 percent of the Earth’s oceans every 24 hours. SeaWinds sends pulses of microwave radiation down to the wind-roughened surface and measures the backscatter of that radiation that returns to the satellite. From this data, wind speed and direction can be estimated.

Craig Risien, while a COAS graduate student working with advisor Dudley Chelton and Mark Hodges of NOAA, developed a five-year climatology of global ocean winds. The climatology is a web-based interactive atlas from which users can retrieve wind statistics, in tabular and graphic form, for a region of interest.

The data have been averaged over 50-km regions, providing monthly averages for approximately 150,000 grid cells distributed evenly across the global ocean. It is able to provide valuable information about the wind statistics in the many regions of the world ocean that are sparsely sampled by ships and buoys.

One useful application is a product for the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration with oil spill response activities. NOAA and the National Weather Service are also interested in the atlas for training, for example, at regional marine workshops.

A QuickSCAT display of wind speed and direction around the Hawaiian Islands. Each arrow can be clicked for more details. Warmer colors indicate faster wind speed.