Application of Sasaki's numerical variational technique to the analysis of height and wind fields over Indian region

An objective analysis method based on Sasaki's numerical variational analysis technique has been taken up for the analysis of geopotential height and wind over the Indian region. The univariate optimum interpolation (UOI) method is used to generate the initial or input fields. These fields are then adjusted by the variational method. A study of this method over Indian and adjoining region for 850, 700, 500, 300 and 200 hPa levels is made from 4 to 8 July 1979 and the analyses obtained using this method are compared with the FGGE analyses.

A multilevel dataset of microplastic abundance in the world’s upper ocean and the Laurentian Great Lakes

A total of 8218 pelagic microplastic samples from the world’s oceans were synthesized to create a dataset composed of raw, calibrated, processed, and gridded data which are made available to the public. The raw microplastic abundance data were obtained by different research projects using surface net tows or continuous seawater intake. Fibrous microplastics were removed from the calibrated dataset. Microplastic abundance which fluctuates due to vertical mixing under different oceanic conditions was standardized. An optimum interpolation method was used to create the gridded data; in total, there were 24.4 trillion pieces (8.2 × 104 ~ 57.8 × 104 tons) of microplastics in the world’s upper oceans.

Assessment and Intercomparison of NOAA Daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (DOISST) version 2.1

NOAA Daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (DOISST) has recently been updated to v2.1 (January 2016–present). Its accuracy may impact the climate assessment, monitoring and prediction, and environment-related applications. Its performance, together with those of seven other well-known sea surface temperature (SST) products, is assessed by comparison with buoy and Argo observations in the global oceans on daily 0.25°×0.25° resolution from January 2016 to June 2020. These seven SST products are NASA MUR25, GHRSST GMPE, BoM GAMSSA, UKMO OSTIA, NOAA GPB, ESA CCI, and CMC.Our assessments indicate that biases and root-mean-square-difference (RMSDs) in reference to all buoys and all Argo floats are low in DOISST. The bias in reference to the independent 10% of buoy SSTs remains low in DOISST, but the RMSD is slightly higher in DOISST than in OSTIA and CMC. The biases in reference to the independent 10% of Argo observations are low in CMC, DOISST, and GMPE; and RMSDs are low in GMPE and CMC. The biases are similar in GAMSSA, OSTIA, GPB, and CCI whether they are compared against all buoys, all Argo, or the 10% of buoy or 10% of Argo observations, while the RMSDs against Argo observations are slightly smaller than those against buoy observations. These features indicate a good performance of DOISST v2.1 among the eight products, which may benefit from ingesting the Argo observations by expanding global and regional spatial coverage of in situ observations for effective bias correction of satellite data.

Improvements of the Daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (DOISST) Version 2.1

NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI Daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (SST) version 2.0 (DOISST v2.0) is a blend of in situ ship and buoy SSTs with satellite SSTs derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). DOISST v2.0 exhibited a cold bias in the Indian Ocean, South Pacific, and South Atlantic due to a lack of ingested drifting-buoy SSTs in the system, which resulted from a gradual data format change from the Traditional Alphanumeric Codes (TAC) to the Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR). The cold bias against Argo was about -0.14°C on global average and -0.28°C in the Indian Ocean from January 2016 to August 2019.We explored the reasons for these cold biases through six progressive experiments. These experiments showed that the cold biases can be effectively reduced by adjusting ship SSTs with available buoy SSTs, using the latest available ICOADS R3.0.2 derived from merging BUFR and TAC, as well as by including Argo observations above 5 m depth. The impact of using satellite MetOp-B instead of NOAA-19 was notable on high-latitude oceans but small on global average, since their biases are adjusted using in situ SSTs. In addition, the warm SSTs in the Arctic were improved by applying freezing-point instead of regressed ice-SST proxy.This paper describes an upgraded version, DOISST v2.1, which addresses biases in v2.0. Overall, by updating v2.0 to v2.1, the biases are reduced to -0.07°C (-0.04°C) and -0.14°C (-0.08°C) in the global and Indian Ocean, respectively, when compared against independent (dependent) Argo observations. The difference against the Group for High Resolution SST (GHRSST) multi-product ensemble (GMPE) product is reduced from -0.09°C to -0.01°C in the global oceans and from -0.20°C to -0.04°C in the Indian Ocean.