Accurate air-sea fluxes are essential to weather-climate forecast/projection. Recently developed autonomous observing technology (e.g., Saildrones) enable us to collect in situ flux data in remote region of the world, such as the Tropics and Arctic where traditionally observations are sparse or absent. These data provide unprecedented opportunities to evaluate our current ability of produce accurate surface fluxes in numerical weather-climate models. In this project, interns will work side-by-side with NOAA and university scientists to compare surface fluxes observed by autonomous devices and produced by state-of-the-art numerical models to identify needed improvement in numerical models.

Other observational data are available from moored buoys. Google Saildrone to see what have been done with it.