A core research priority at Oceanweather has been to develop analysis systems to produce the most accurate marine surface wind fields possible of both discrete historical events on a regional scale and of basin-scale or global continuous multi-year wind fields. The research has addressed a wide variety of topics ranging from study of systematic and random errors of various data sources (ships, moored buoys, offshore platforms, coastal stations, various satellite sensors), to a quantification of the error structure of wind fields produced as a part of the new global atmospheric reanalysis projects. For example, in a landmark paper, Cardone et al., (1990) successfully isolated bias from trend in marine wind climatologies by adjusting wind speed estimates from ship report depending on whether the observation originated in anemometer measurements or Beaufort estimates. For applications where observations are not available such as forecasting, Oceanweather has refined and applied its marine planetary boundary layer (MPBL) model, which links the marine wind profile to large scale pressure gradients and thermal properties (Cardone, 1969; Cardone et al.,1980). That model has been utilized as well by several US and foreign centers (e.g Gemmill et al., 1988)

Until the advent of the new global reanalysis products, Oceanweather produced extratropical wind fields by a combination of MPBL derived winds and intensive manual kinematic analyses of adjusted wind observations (e.g. Cardone et al., 1980). More recently the emphasis has been on the utilization of the global reanalysis products after they have been adjusted to remove regionally dependent systematic errors (Cardone et al., 1999), in combination with selective application of classical kinematic analysis.

The direct kinematic analysis of wind fields from wind data has been greatly facilitated in recent years by the introduction of Oceanweather's Interactive Kinematic Objective Analysis system (IOKA), which utilizes a unique graphical interface developed at Oceanweather called Wind Workstation (WWS) (Cox et al., 1995). Some degree of kinematic analysis is almost always required for accurate wind fields. Success depends not only upon the skill and experience of the analyst (or operator of the WWS), but on the proper interpretation and adjustment to "equivalent neutral wind speeds at a common reference level" of winds reported by the various sources noted above. Cardone introduced the concept of the "equivalent neutral wind speed", (Cardone, 1969; also Cardone et al., 1990) a concept which has been widely accepted by the ocean response and remote sensing communities.

Oceanweather's wind fields are recognized by the international scientific community as the most accurate which may possibly be derived from a given data base, and are often used as "reference" fields for use in the analysis of data acquired in major international field programs and associated ocean response modeling experiments (e.g. in LEWEX, Cardone, 1991; in SWADE, Cardone et al., 1995).

References for Wind Field Modeling

1969. Cardone, V. J. Specification of the wind distribution in the marine boundary layer for wave forecasting. Report TR-69-01, Geophysical Sciences Laboratory. New York University. (Available from NTIS #AD 702-490, 137pp)

1980. Cardone, V J., A. J. Broccoli, C. V. Greenwood and J. A. Greenwood. Error characteristics of extratropical storm wind fields specified from historical data. J. Petrol. Tech., 32, 873-880.

1988. Gemmill, W. H., T. W. Yu and D. M. Feit,. A statistical comparison of methods for determining ocean surface winds. Weather and Forecasting, 3, 153-160.

1990. Cardone, V. J., J. G. Greenwood and M. A. Cane, 1990. Trends in historical marine wind data. J. of Climate, 3, 113-127.

1991. Cardone, V. J.,. The LEWEX wind fields and baseline hindcast. In: Directional Ocean Wave Spectra. R. C. Beal, Ed., Johns Hopkins University Press, 136-146.

1995. Cardone, V. J., H. C. Graber, R. E. Jensen, S. Hasselmann and M.J Caruso,. In search of the true surface wind field during SWADE IOP-1: Ocean wave modeling perspective. The Global Atmosphere-Ocean System., 3, 107-150.

1995 Cox, A.T., J.A. Greenwood, V.J. Cardone and V.R. Swail. An Interactive Objective Kinematic Analysis System Fourth International Workshop on Wave Hindcasting and Forecasting. October 16-20, 1995. Banff, Alberta, Canada.

1999 Cardone, V.J., A.T. Cox and V.R. Swail. Evaluation of NCEP Reanalysis Surface Marine Wind Fields for Ocean Wave Hindcasts. CLIMAR 1999 Preprints. Sept. 8-15, 1999, Vancouver, Canada.