Surface Currents

Cover of a factsheet titled "Surface Currents," featuring ocean waves and logos from agencies like WMO, ISC, IOC, and UNEP, related to climate observation.
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.

Surface Geostrophic Currents

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
 (*)UnitValues UnitValues
Horizontal ResolutionGkm10 km10
B20 20
T25 100
Vertical ResolutionG -  -
B- -
T- -
Temporal ResolutionGh1 d1/4
B  1
T6 7
TimelinessGh1 d 
B   
T3 1
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma)Gm s-10.02 m s-10.02
B   
T0.1 0.1
StabilityG     
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 abombelliatwmo [dot] int (GCOS Secretariat).

  • Globcurrent
  • Ocean Surface Current Analyses Real-time (OSCAR)
  • Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC)
Sea surface currents
Domain:
Ocean
Subdomain:
Physical
Scientific Area:
Physical Properties
ECV Steward:
Marjolaine Krug
Products:
Ekman Currents; Surface Geostrophic Current