Navigation Bar WOCEMET Home DAC Surface Met Data SAC Surface Flux Data WOCEMET Documentation WOCEMET Web Site Updates

WOCE Logo COAPS Logo

Monthly Fields of Surface Meteorological Variables and Turbulent Fluxes for the Indian Ocean; 1960-1989

These data are monthly, 2-deg mesh, analysis fields of surface variables over the Indian ocean. The technique used to provide these fields is described in a paper Jones et. al.; (1995). There are monthly fields for each month from January 1960 - December 1989. There are 10 analysis variables: (variable name, abbrev, and units of the data)

easterly pseudostress (u*w) (M/s)**2
northerly pseudostress (v*w) (M/s)**2
wind speed (w) M s**-1
sea surface temperature (sst) Degrees-C
air temperature (at) Degrees-C
sfc humidity (q) kg kg**-1
easterly wind stress (tx) N m**-2
northerly wind stress (ty) N m**-2
sensible heat flux (h) W m**-2
latent heat flux (e) W m**-2

Grid points over land or non-analyzed data locations are indicated by special value (99999.0).

The data are available in netCDF format (highly recommended). There is one file (ndn6089_flux.nc, 7.6 mb) for wind stress and turbulent heat fluxes, and the other file (ndn6089_met.nc, 11.4 mb) contains the standard meteorological variables. Since netCDF files are fairly well self-describing and transportable across several supported platforms, all support information on reading the data, units, etc are all contained within the files.

Information on netCDF data formatting can be found by contacting the Unidata Program at NCAR/UCAR (see the README_netCDF file in this directory), e.g. http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/

Available in this directory are FORTRAN programs to read the netCDF files (these still require the netCDF libraries!), read6089flux.f and read6089met.f

Any questions regarding these data can be addressed to Dr. David M. Legler (address given below).

The development of these analyses were supported by NASA (grant NGT-30056), ONR (grant N00014-85-J-1240) and NOAA Office of Global Programs (grant NA16RC0279-01).

In addition, this effort is now supported by NSF (grant OCE-8900077) in support of the Florida State University WOCE Data Assembly Center for Surface Meteorology Data and Special Analysis Center for Surface Fluxes. Contact Dr. David M. Legler for further information.

Dr. David M. Legler
Center for Ocean Atmospheric Prediction Studies
Florida State University                 |  (850) 644-3797 (Voice)
2035 E. Dirac Dr./Suite-200 Johnson Bldg |        644-4841 (fax)
Tallahassee, FL  32306-2840              | Email: legler@coaps.fsu.edu
--------------------------------------------
WOCE Sfc Meteorology/Fluxes Center  coaps.fsu.edu/WOCE/
COARE Sfc. Meteorology Data Center  coaps.fsu.edu/COARE/

Jones, C. S., D. M. Legler, and J. J. O'Brien, 1995: Variability of surface fluxes over the Indian ocean; 1960-1989. The Global Atmosphere-Ocean System, 3, 249-272.

Last Modified: Wed, 25 Mar 1998