MERCATOR OCEAN JOURNA: 
SEPTEMBER 2021 
50°N 
20° 
3- 
aN°S 
530°5 
BO°FE 
120°E 
180° 
A 
jurka 
z.. na 
Ku T 
120° WW 
602 
-2.0 
- 1.6 
1.2 
— 0.8 
L04 — 
10.0 % 
—0.4 E 
—0.8 
1.2 
—1.6 
_2.0 
igure 3: Collocated differences between scatterometer (Metop-A, Metop-B and Metop-C ASCAT) and ERA5 U10S meridional winc 
‚ompnonents, accumulated over a 3-dav temnoral window (1-3 June 201% 
1.4 Ocean Monitoring Indicators 
Wind pattern anomalies are connected to changes in 
ocean variables (such as waves, currents, sea surface 
temperature and salinity) and global climate indicators 
(like the North Atlantic Oscillation, El NiÄio Southern 
Osecillation, or the Indian Dipole index). The Wind-TAC has 
ıntroduced three Ocean Monitoring Indicators that exhibit 
annual anomalies in the mean wind, the wind variability 
and the wind-induced Ekman upwelling. Global anomaly 
maps display wind pattern information to a wide range of 
users 
1.5 Status at the end of Copernicus 1 
The Wind-TAC portfolio now contains five wind products, 
two NRT L3 and L4 products, their REP counterparts and 
a L4 monthly average product. Over the six-year period, 
the amount of available NRT scatterometer observations 
has nearly doubled. The update frequency of the REP 
products has increased allowing users to perform their 
analyses over the longest possible period. The collocated 
ECMWF model winds in the products have been leveraged 
to identify systematic and variance biases in the model. 
This achievement led to the current development of a 
scatterometer-corrected ocean forecing product. 
1.6 Post 2021 perspectives 
The Wind-TAC will continue to introduce newly available 
L3 scatterometer datasets from the international virtual 
constellation of scatterometers to the CMEMS catalogue, 
in order to improve the temporal coverage of satellite wind 
vector data. Possible candidates are Oceansat-3, Metop- 
SC, FY-3E WindRad, CFOSAT and additional satellites in 
*he HY2 series, provided that these datasets pass the data 
Juality and stability criteria as required by 0SI SAF at L2. 
New satellite wind sources will be considered as input data 
for current L4 wind products, such as passive microwave 
-adiometers. Furthermore, developments will focus or 
:improving the selection procedure of remotely sensec 
wind observations in space and time to limit detrimenta 
effects in downstream applications due to sampling issues. 
As the spatial and temporal resolution of ocean models 
increases, users require higher-resolution ocean wind 
foreing products. The spatial and temporal resolution of 
the current L4 wind product is expected to be enhanced 
at regional scales to hourly wind analyses at a 0.125° 
a1orizontal resolution. These developments will exploit 
spatial wind structures based on wind retrievals from SAR 
anboard Sentinel-1a and 1b within selected ocean regions 
‚e.g., Mediterranean Sea, North Atlantic, Indian Ocean and 
the main eastern boundary upwelling systems). 
"he ongoing development of ERA* is expected to culminate 
with the introduction of a new L4 wind product, providing 
hourly scatterometer-corrected ECMWF model wind fields 
at 0.125° horizontal resolution. Extensive validation of 
the method will be performed to select configurations 
that provide the best reduction of scatterometer-model 
biases. The Wind-TAC encourages close collaboration with 
ZMEMS MFCs, C3S and other users to assist them in the 
exploitation of improved L3 and L4 wind forcing products 
for wave. current and ailr-sea interaction modellina