An objective analysis technique has been developed to produce in-situ based fields of surface turbulent fluxes (momentum, latent heat, and sensible heat fluxes) and the fields used to create the fluxes (vector wind, scalar wind, near-surface air temperature and humidity, and SST). This third generation FSU product moves beyond our past production of wind-only fields. The surface winds in the FSU products have been widely used in ocean modeling and ENSO prediction. The current objective approach treats the various types of observations (volunteer observing ships (VOS), moored buoys, drifting buoys) as independent, and objectively determines weights for each type of observation. Objectively derived uncertainties for these products will be released in the near future.



The FSU fluxes provide a new set of ocean surface forcing fields which are well suited to aid in understanding the global climate system and hence useful for climate prediction. Our long-term monthly fields are well suited for seasonal to decadal studies, and our related hybrid satellite and numerical weather prediction (NWP) fields are ideal for daily to annual variability and quality assessment of the monthly products.