Validation of Heat fluxes Derived from the Earth System Prediction Capability (ESPC) Project.

The numerical representation of physical properties and their exchange at the boundaries in circulation models are the key factors in determining the proper functioning of air-sea coupled models and in defining the accuracy of the output forecast. In particular, some interesting features of ocean circulation, as fronts, mixing, upwelling, convection, eddies, hurricane pre-conditioning, etc., are extremely sensitive to small variations in the heat fluxes and their associated variables (mainly wind, sea surface temperature, air temperature, and humidity content at the surface). We present here a study of the air-sea heat fluxes for the global ocean during fall 2015 within the Earth System Prediction Capability (ESPC) project. In particular, we compared the ESPC-derived heat fluxes with fields derived by the Naval Research Laboratory Ocean Surface Flux (NFLUX) System, the Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) products from the NASA/NCAR database, and ship observations where available. We calculated statistical parameters (as mean bias, mean square error, etc.) to study the diurnal variability of global heat fluxes and their time evolution during the period examined.