OAFlux: Objectively Analyzed air-sea Fluxes for the global oceans.

OAFlux: Objectively Analyzed air-sea Fluxes for the global oceans.

"The OAFlux project aims to provide consistent, multi-decade, global analysis of air-sea heat, freshwater (evaporation), and momentum fluxes for use in studies of global energy budget, water cycle, atmosphere and ocean circulation, and climate. The OAFlux project is so called because it applies objective analysis approach to take into account data errors in the development of enhanced global flux fields. The objective analysis denotes the process of synthesizing measurements/estimates from various sources. Such process reduces error in each input data source and produces an estimate that has the minimum error variance. The OAFlux project uses the objective analysis to obtain optimal estimates of flux-related surface meteorology and then computes the global fluxes by using the state-of-the-art bulk flux parameterizations. "(http://oaflux.whoi.edu/index.html)  The OAFlux products are created from an optimal blending of satellite retrievals and three atmospheric analyses.

Key Strengths

Error estimates are provided for all variables except for net heat surface flux, short wave and long wave radiation

Please cite data sources, following the data providers' instructions
Suggested Data Citation
Dataset DOIs
None
Hosted Climate Index Files
None
Data Access
  1. WHOI Data Server
Usage Restrictions
None

Key Figures

Climate Data Guide Image: OAFlux

OAFlux: annual mean latent heat flux for 2011. (http://oaflux.whoi.edu/heatflux.html)
Climate Data Guide Image: OAFlux

OAFlux: annual mean sensible heat flux for 2011. (http://oaflux.whoi.edu/heatflux.html)
Climate Data Guide Image: OAFlux

OAFlux: annual mean evaporation for 2011. (http://oaflux.whoi.edu/heatflux.html)
Climate Data Guide Image: OAFlux

OAFlux: Sample of the yet to be released wind derived products. The figure shows mean winds and winn stress curl for 2 periods. (http://oaflux.whoi.edu/heatflux.html)

Other Information

Earth system components and main variables
Atmosphere, Latent & sensible heat flux, Radiation, Wind, Ocean, SST - sea surface temperature, Surface Flux, wind stress curl
Type of data product
Satellite Data Products
Dataset collections
None

Years of record
to
Metadata ID
None
Data time period extended
Yes, data set is extended
Timestep
Daily, Monthly
Domain
Global
Formats:
netCDF
Input Data

satellite, reanalysis data

Vertical Levels:
Surface Data Set
Missing Data Flag
None
Ocean or Land
Ocean Only
Spatial Resolution

1x1

Model Resolution (reanalysis)
None
Data Assimilation Method
None
Model Vintage (reanalysis)
None

Key Publications
  1. Yu, L., X. Jin, and R. A. Weller, 2008: Multidecade Global Flux Datasets from the Objectively Analyzed Air-sea Fluxes (OAFlux) Project: Latent and sensible heat fluxes, ocean evaporation, and related surface meteorological variables. Woods Hole Oceanograp
  2. Yu, L., and R. A. Weller, 2007: Objectively Analyzed air-sea heat Fluxes for the global oce-free oceans (1981–2005). Bull. Ameri. Meteor. Soc., 88, 527–539
  3. Fairall, C. W., E. F. Bradley, J. E. Hare, A. A. Grachev, and J. B. Edson (2003), Bulk parameterization of air-sea fluxes: Updates and verification for the COARE algorithm, J. Clim., 16, 571–591