On the Earth's surface energy exchange determination from ERS satellite ATSR data: Part 3. Turbulent heat flux on open sea

This is the third in a series of papers which discusses determination of the Earth's surface energy exchange from ERS satellite Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) data. This paper focuses on estimation of turbulence heat flux exchange by using ATSR data in areas of open sea. In this paper, we present results of net longwave radiation, latent heat flux and sensible heat flux. The results of net longwave radiation are from the first paper in the series (Xue et al., 1998, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 19, 2561-2583). We use monthly average tropical-ocean-global-atmosphere (TOGA) data and ATSR sea surface temperature (SST) data to calculate two years' (1992 and 1993) heat fluxes in the TOGA area. A comparison with published results indicates good qualitative agreement. Also, we compared the results of heat flux exchange by using ATSR SST data and by using the TOGA bucket SST data. The ATSR SST dataset has been shown to be useful in helping to estimate the large space scale heat flux exchange.