TIME SERIES ANALYSIS USING GRIDDED WIND-STRESS PRODUCT DERIVED FROM SATELLITE SCATTEROMETER DATA

Time series of gridded surface wind and wind-stress vectors over the world ocean have been constructed by satellite scatterometer data. The products are derived from the ERS-l,2 covering 9 years during 1992-2000 and the Sea Winds on board QuikSCAT (Qscat) which has been operating up to the present since June 1999, so they allows us to analyze variabilities with various time scales. In this study, we focus on interannual variability of the wind stress in the mid- and high-latitude region of North Pacific. These are compared with those by numerical weather prediction(NWP) ones (NCEP Reanalysis). We also examine variability in the wind-stress curl field that is an important factor for ocean dynamics and focus its time and spatial characters in the northwestern Pacific around Japan. It is found that the vorticity field in the lower atmosphere tends to increase gradually with time, suggesting the enhancement of the North Pacific subtropical gyre.