Birol Kara, Alan Wallcraft, Joe Metzger and Harley Hurlburt, NRL Stennis; Chris Fairall, NOAA Colorado
Inter-annual and climatological variations of wind stress drag coefficient CD are examined over the global ocean from 1998 through 2004. it is found that (1) CD value can change significantly (e.g., >50%) on 12 hourly time scales around the Kuroshio and Gulf Stream current systems, (2) there is a strong seasonal variability in CD for a given year but there is not much spatial variability on inter-annual time scales for a given month.