The Development of a New Daily Global Mesoscale Blended Ocean Surface Currents (BOSC) Product
- 1University of Maryland, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, College Park, United States of America
- 2NOAA/NESDIS/STAR, Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, College Park, United States of America
We introduce the new satellite-derived daily global mesoscale (1/6th degree) Blended Ocean Surface Currents (BOSC) product, which will be available in quasi-realtime from
NOAA CoastWatch. Existing observation-based surface current products synthesize geostrophic currents derived from satellite altimetry with an Ekman drift component
derived from surface wind stresses. BOSC builds upon this traditional approach by including additional observation-derived effects such as Stokes Drift, mesoscale advection, and high latitude surface currents inferred from Sea Ice drift. Additionally, BOSC incorporates satellite SST imagery to derive surface motion from the advection of SST features, in a process known as “feature-tracking”. These additional observations provide further constraint of surface currents in tropical, polar, and coastal regions where satellite-derived geostrophic and Ekman currents tend to provide less accurate estimates. Additionally, we offer a comparison of BOSC to existing observation-based surface current products as well as to multiple independent in situ datasets.
How to cite: Eisner, S., Carton, J., Byrne, D., Grodsky, S., and Leuliette, E.: The Development of a New Daily Global Mesoscale Blended Ocean Surface Currents (BOSC) Product, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-10701, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-10701, 2023.
