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Details of Award

NERC Reference : NE/B503617/1

Application of a dynamic data-fusion scheme to the estimation of a long-term, satellite, global Sea-Surface Temperature Analysis.

Grant Award

Principal Investigator:
Dr M Juckes, STFC - Laboratories, RAL Space
Science Area:
Marine
Overall Classification:
Marine
ENRIs:
Natural Resource Management
Global Change
Science Topics:
Ocean Circulation
Ocean - Atmosphere Interact.
Climate & Climate Change
Abstract:
The project will combine observations of sea surface temperature from the past 15 years into a homogeneous gridded dataset and evaluate dynamic error estimates. Existing datasets have uniform, climatological error estimates which do not reflect evolving uncertainties due, inter alia, to fluctuations in observation density and to varying cloud cover. As methods of analysing and exploiting data become increasingly sophisticated it is becoming ever more important to have accurate characterisations of the actual, rather than climatological, uncertainties. The project will exploit and further develop a new analysis technique to generate analysis fields at higher spatio-temporal resolution than in earlier work. Particular attention will be given to accurate representation of near-coastal features because of the importance of western boundary currents. Accurate representation of these currents is challenging not only because of the small scales of the flow but also because the proximity of land creates inhomogeneities in the error statistics and because of the additional cloud cover in the coastal region which disrupts infra-red observations from space. It is also hoped that the improved spatiotemporal resolution will be sufficient to identify areas of deep convection which are crucial to the oceanic heat transport. The new analysis technique uses a hierarchical tree structure to be able to represent both the large- scale structures (low in the hierarchy) and the fine-scale detail (high in the hierarchy) in a computationally efficient algorithm. It has been developed for use in operational sea surface temperature analysis under a research grant from NOAA. This project will exploit the existing code and develop it further to represent error statistics in greater detail.
Period of Award:
1 Jan 2005 - 31 May 2007
Value:
£100,736
Authorised funds only
NERC Reference:
NE/B503617/1
Grant Stage:
Completed
Scheme:
Standard Grants Pre FEC
Grant Status:
Closed
Programme:
Standard Grant

This grant award has a total value of £100,736  

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FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)

Total - T&STotal - StaffTotal - Indirect Costs
£2,039£67,601£31,096

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