Current Science

Tapan Misra , Raj Kumar , Ernesto Rodríguez

Abstract

Ocean surface winds are an important parameter for various meteorological and oceanographic applications. These are utilized not only for the study of severe weather events like cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons, but are also important for assimilation in numerical weather forecast models to improve the forecast. The ocean surface winds also cater to the forcing of ocean wave and circulation models used for ocean state forecasts. In situ measurements of winds by buoys and ships are point observations and also very few in number to provide a synoptic view.

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Suchandra A. Bhowmick ¹, James Cotton ², Alexander Fore ³, Raj Kumar ¹, Christophe Payan ⁴, Ernesto Rodríguez ³, Anuja Sharma ¹, Bryan Stiles ³, Ad Stoffelen ⁵, Anton Verhoef ⁵

Affiliations
1 Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, Ahmedabad 380 015, IN
2 Met Office, GB
3 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, US
4 CNRM, Université de Toulouse, Météo-France, CNRS, Toulouse, FR
5 Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), NL

Abstract

SCATSAT-1 is a continuity mission for the Oceansat-2 scatterometer, OSCAT-1, which provided useful ocean vector wind observations used in, among others, oceanography, numerical weather prediction (NWP) and nowcasting. The purpose of this paper is to review the findings of the SCATSAT-1 CalVal team regarding the stability and performance of version 1.1.3 of the SCATSAT-1 data. The international CalVal team organized by ISRO included participants from various institutions in India, ISRO’s Space Applications Centre, KNMI from the Netherlands, and from the USA, NOAA, and NASA’s JPL. To perform the evaluation, different centres processed the data independently using heritage processors and made comparisons against NASA’s Ku-band QuikSCAT mission, in situ data, and NWP models. We also provide a preliminary assessment of the impact of the SCATSAT-1 data on operational forecasts in India and Europe. We conclude that the SCATSAT-1 data shows significantly improved performance relative to ISRO’s OSCAT-1 on Oceansat-2, and that the instrument seems to be stable, given the limited period of observation. The CalVal team has also identified features in the data that could benefit from calibration and processing changes, potentially leading to further improvements on data quality.

Keywords

Calibration, OSCAT-1, QuikSCAT, Weather Prediction.

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