Multi-satellite measurements of large diurnal warming events

Gentemann, C. L., Minnett, P. J., Le Borgne, P. and Merchant, C. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4687-9850 (2008) Multi-satellite measurements of large diurnal warming events. Geophysical Research Letters, 35 (22). L22602. ISSN 0094-8276 doi: 10.1029/2008GL035730

Abstract/Summary

Diurnal warming events between 5 and 7 K, spatially coherent over large areas (∼1000 km), are observed in independent satellite measurements of ocean surface temperature. The majority of the large events occurred in the extra-tropics. Given sufficient heating (from solar radiation), the location and magnitude of these events appears to be primarily determined by large-scale wind patterns. The amplitude of the measured diurnal heating scales inversely with the spatial resolution of the different sensors used in this study. These results indicate that predictions of peak diurnal warming using wind speeds with a 25 km spatial resolution available from satellite sensors and those with 50–100 km resolution from Numerical Weather Prediction models may have underestimated warming. Thus, the use of these winds in modeling diurnal effects will be limited in accuracy by both the temporal and spatial resolution of the wind fields.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/33731
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Uncontrolled Keywords	diurnal; SST; satellite
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
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