These data are Pacific Ocean pseudo-stress from ship reports on a 84x30 grid, 1 grid/month. We acknowledge the support of NOAA Office of Global Programs, TOGA Project, for this project.
The analyses are the Research-Quality product based on the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) surface marine observations data (TD-1129) for the years 1981-present.
NOTE! The ananlysis for the years 1961-1965 are based on the Wyrtki-Meyers data set, while the analysis for the years 1966-1980 is based on the COADS data set.
The data are in (meters/sec)**2 with east = positive and north = positive.
Any tau x and tau y with a value of 999.0 is over land. The data are on a 2 by 2 degree grid, with 84 points e-w and 30 points n-s.
tau x( 1, 1) and tau y( 1, 1) are centered at 124e and 29s
tau x( 2, 1) " " are centered at 126e and 29s
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tau x(83, 1) " " are centered at 72w and 29s
tau x(84, 1) " " are centered at 70w and 29s
tau x( 1, 2) " " are centered at 124e and 27s
tau x( 1, 3) " " are centered at 124e and 25s
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tau x( 1,29) " " are centered at 124e and 27n
tau x( 1,30) " " are centered at 124e and 29n
The following code is an example of reading the data. Note: the data in the files are scaled up by a factor of 10, and that using this format will scale them to the proper numbers.
program readwd
dimension taux(84,30),tauy(84,30)
c read 1 month wind stress grid
read (10,100) month,iyear,taux,tauy
100 format (2i5,14f5.1,/(16f5.1))
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end
The climatology file (66-85pac.cli) has the same layout as the yearly data files, with the exception that the year variable reflects the period of the climatology: xxyy, where 19xx is the beginning year, and 19yy is the ending year. To retrieve these values in fortran:
read (1,10) month,iyear,taux,tauy
begin_year=iyear/100+1900
end_year=mod(iyear,100)+1900
The file 25yrmsc.newa has the same layout, except that the year variable is zero.
Legler, D.M., and J.J. O'Brien, 1988: Tropical Pacific wind stress analysis for TOGA, IOC Time series of ocean measurements, IOC Technical Series 33, Volume 4, UNESCO.
Stricherz, Jame N., J. J. O'Brien, and D. M. Legler, 1992: Atlas of Florida State University Tropical Pacific Winds for TOGA 1966-1985, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 250 pp.
Stricherz, James N., David M. Legler, and James J. O'Brien, 1997: TOGA Pseudo-stress Atlas 1985-1994, Volume II: Pacific Ocean, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 155 pp.
Wyrtki, K. and G. Meyers, 1975: The trade wind field over the Pacific Ocean. Part I. The mean field and mean annual variation. Hawaii Inst. Geophys., University of Hawaii. HIG-75-1, 26 pp.
Slutz, R. J., S. J. Lubker, J. D. Hiscox, S. D. Woodruff, R. L. Jenne, D. H. Joseph, P. M. Seurer and J. D. Elms, COADS-Comprehenisve Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set, CIRES/ERL/NCAR/NCDC, Boulder, CO, 1985.
Voice: (850) 644-6918
Fax: (850) 644-4841
Internet: winds@coaps.fsu.edu
Last Revised: 29 Sep 1997