Surface Currents
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The surface ocean general circulation is responsible for significant surface transport of heat, salt, passive tracers and ocean pollutants. On basin scales, surface currents and their variations are a major player in climate to weather fluctuations. The boundary currents on each side of the ocean basins transport significant amounts of heat, salt and passive tracers. Western Boundary Currents in particular transport heat and properties polwards, moderating climate. Convergences/divergences, spiralling eddies, and filaments all contribute to vertical motions and mass exchange. Surface currents impact the steepness of surface waves, and are thus important for generating accurate marine sea state forecasts. | |
| Domain: | Ocean | |
| Subdomain: | Physical | |
| Scientific Area: | Physical Properties | |
| ECV Steward: | Marjolaine Krug | |
| Products: | Ekman Currents; Surface Geostrophic Current | |
Surface Geostrophic Currents
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Figure: Globcurrent merged global ocean gridded absolute geostrophic velocities from SSALTO/DUACS AVISO L4 Product on 0.1 degree resolution geographic grid. Source: www.globcurrent.ifremer.fr |
ECV Products and Requirements
These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).
The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Surface Currents.
| Products | Ekman Currents | Surface Geostrophic Current | ||||
| (*) | Unit | Values | Unit | Values | ||
| Horizontal Resolution | G | km | 10 | km | 10 | |
| B | 20 | 20 | ||||
| T | 25 | 100 | ||||
| Vertical Resolution | G | - | - | |||
| B | - | - | ||||
| T | - | - | ||||
| Temporal Resolution | G | h | 1 | d | 1/4 | |
| B | 1 | |||||
| T | 6 | 7 | ||||
| Timeliness | G | h | 1 | d | ||
| B | ||||||
| T | 3 | 1 | ||||
| Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) | G | m s-1 | 0.02 | m s-1 | 0.02 | |
| B | ||||||
| T | 0.1 | 0.1 | ||||
| Stability | G | |||||
| B | ||||||
| T | ||||||
(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful
Data Sources
This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.
- Globcurrent
- Ocean Surface Current Analyses Real-time (OSCAR)
https://www.esr.org/research/oscar/
- Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC)
