ACCURATE ESTIMATION OF GLOBAL LATENT HEAT FLUX USING MULTI-SATELLITE DATA

Global latent heat flux data sets are crucial for many studies such as those related to air-sea interaction and climate variation. Currently, various global latent heat flux data sets are constructed using satellite data. Japanese Ocean Flux data sets with Use of Remote sensing Observations (J-OFURO) includes one of the satellite-derived global latent heat flux data (Kubota et aI., 2000). In this study, we review future development of J-OFURO global latent heat flux data set. In particular, we investigate usage of multi-satellite data for estimating accurate global latent heat flux. Accurate estimation of surface wind speeds over the global ocean is one of key factors for the improved estimation of global latent heat flux. First, we demonstrate improvement of daily wind speed estimation using multi-satellites data from microwave radiometers and scatterometers such as DMSP/SSMI, ERS/AMI, QuikSCAT/SeaWinds, AqualAMSR-E, ADEOS2/AMSR etc. Next, we demonstrate improvement of global latent heat flux estimation using the wind speed data derived from multi-satellite data.