Scatterometer wind fields: A new release over the decade 1991-2001

The global surface wind fields calculated from scatterometer observations have been updated to cover the decade 1991-2001. This involves an enhancement of the remotely sensed wind retrievals, quality control, and objective method. This paper presents the improvements with respect to the first release and provides the main characteristics of the surface parameter fields. The accuracy of the resulting weekly and monthly surface wind fields is studied through comparisons with buoy and numerical model averaged wind estimates.