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The FSU Tropical Indian Winds - a description

The data are Indian Ocean pseudostresses from ship reports on a 90x54 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 1980-present. The analyses for the years 1970-1979 are based on the COADS CMR5 individual ship observations.

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 or indicate where data is not available. The data are on a 1 by 1 degree grid. There are 90 points e-w and 54 points n-s.

        tau x( 1, 1) and tau y( 1, 1) are centered at 30.5e and 29.5s
        tau x( 2, 1)    "     "       are centered at 31.5e and 29.5s
          .
          .
        tau x(89, 1)    "     "       are centered at 118.5e and 29.5s
        tau x(90, 1)    "     "       are centered at 119.5e and 29.5s

        tau x( 1, 2)    "     "       are centered at 30.5e and 28.5s
        tau x( 1, 3)    "     "       are centered at 30.5e and 27.5s
          .
          .
        tau x( 1,53)    "     "       are centered at 30.5e and 22.5n
        tau x( 1,54)    "     "       are centered at 30.5e and 23.5n

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(90,54),tauy(90,54)
*
*       read 1 month wind stress grid
*
       read (1,10) month,iyear,taux,tauy
    10 format (2i5,14f5.1,/(16f5.1))
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
       end

The climatology files (70-76ndn.cli, 70-92ndn.cli and 77-92.cli) have 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

Note: the climatology (*.cli) files contain tau x and tau y fields for for each of the 12 calendar months and a 13th set of tau x and tau y fields thatrepresents the overall average (all months and years combined).
REFERENCES:

Legler, David M., James N. Stricherz, and James J. O'Brien, 1997: TOGA Pseudostress Atlas 1985-1994, Volume III: Indian Ocean, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 155 pp.

Stricherz, J., D. M. Legler, and J. J. O'Brien, 1993: Atlas of Florida State University Indian Ocean Winds for TOGA 1970-1985, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 250 pp.

Legler, D. M., I. M. Navon, and J. J. O'Brien, 1989: Objective Analysis of Pseudostress Over the Indian Ocean Using a Direct-Minimization Approach. Monthly Weather Review, 117, 709-720.

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-Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set, CIRES/ERL/NCAR/NCDC, Boulder, CO, 1985.


Shawn R. Smith
COAPS
The Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-2840

Voice: (850) 644-6918
Fax: (850) 644-4841

Internet: winds@coaps.fsu.edu

Last Revised: 21 September 2004