Ocean Observing and Climate
The NOC1.1a Flux Climatology
The NOC1.1a flux climatology is the renamed version of the Adjusted SOC flux climatology. It was produced within a NERC COAPEC thematic programme project using inverse analysis techniques to remove the global ocean heat budget imbalance of 30 Wm-2 that was present in the Original SOC flux climatology (now the NOC1.1 flux climatology).
The inverse analysis is a mathematical method in which hydrographic measurements of the ocean heat transport are used to constrain the heat flux. Comparisons with independent measurements were used to select a preferred solution in which there are increases of 19% to the latent heat flux, 7% to the sensible heat flux and 9% to the longwave flux, and a reduction of 6% to the shortwave flux.
Full details are given in the following paper, in which the NOC1.1a fields are referred to as Solution 3,
Grist, J. P. and S. A. Josey, 2003: Inverse analysis adjustment of the SOC air-sea flux climatology using ocean heat transport constraints. J. Climate, 20, 3274-3295, DOI: 10.1175/1520-0442(2003)016%3C3274:IAAOTS%3E2.0.CO;2.
Data Access
Heat flux fields Data format: Ascii, Matlab or Netcdf
The fields are freely available to interested users. However, we encourage users to inform us by email if they transfer files giving a contact address and a short summary of research interest. By doing this we will be able to inform you of future modifications to the fields. For this purpose and for general queries contact: Simon Josey or Jeremy Grist .
