Author(s)

Satya Prakash, Mahesh C, Rakesh Mohan Gairola, Samir Pokhrel

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The exchange of surface freshwater, heat and moisture fluxes across the air-sea interface strongly influences the oceanic circulation and its variability at all time scales. The goal of this paper is to estimate and examine surface freshwater flux at monthly scale exclusively from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) measurements over the tropical oceans for the period of 1998 - 2010. The monthly mean fields of TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) sea surface temperature (SST), wind speed (WS), and total precipitable water (W) are used to estimate the surface evaporation utilizing the bulk aerodynamics parameterization formula. The merged TRMM Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA)-3B43 product is combined with the estimated evaporation to compute the surface freshwater flux. A preliminary comparison of the satellite derived evaporation, precipitation and freshwater flux has been carried out with the Hamburg Ocean Atmosphere Parameters and Fluxes (HOAPS-3) datasets. Also, the estimated evaporation and TMPA-3B43 precipitation are validated with in-situ observations from the moored buoys in the different oceans. The results suggest that the TRMM has great potential to estimate surface freshwater flux for climatological and oceanic hydrological applications.

Evaporation, Precipitation, Freshwater Flux, Tropical Oceans, Oceanic Circulation

S. Prakash, M. C, R. Gairola and S. Pokhrel, "Surface Freshwater Flux Estimation Using TRMM Measurements Over the Tropical Oceans," Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, Vol. 1 No. 4, 2011, pp. 225-234. doi: 10.4236/acs.2011.14025.