A questionnaire will be distributed to participants, soliciting high-quality validation data from research vessels and buoys. Requirements for cases to be included in the validation data set are that documentation exist for the data, some error analysis has been conducted, and necessary meta data is available (i.e. location, instrument heights). Requested data include:

• skin and bulk SST
• surface air temperature and humidity
• wind speed and direction
• ocean current speed
• direct flux measurements (e.g. eddy correlation, inertial dissipation)

Note: Not all cases are expected to have all of these data parameters. Ancillary data associated with these cases is also requested:

• precipitation
• surface radiation fluxes
• radiosondes
• cloud information

Relevant satellite data will be made available to each investigator, matched to the time and location of each validation data point. Satellite data covering a region of 250 km, centered approximately on the data point will be included. The associated grid cells from NWP analyses (NCEP, ECMWF) will also be provided.

Once common satellite and in situ data sets are distributed to interested researchers, analysis results (either retrieved input variables or fluxes) will be collected and compared. The following specific intercomparisons will be conducted:

• evaluation of bulk flux models using direct flux measurements
• evaluation of input variables:
  • skin SST
  • air temperature
  • air humidity
  • surface wind speed, direction
• evaluation of satellite-derived fluxes

A second workshop will be convened to review these comparison results, decide what else needs to be tested or examined, plan for completing the comparisons during the following year (writing some papers), and discussing the best design for a global analysis method.

Last Updated Monday, September 12 2005 @ 05:43 PM EDT