SEA SURFACE WIND SPEEDS IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC EXTRATROPICAL CYCLONES ACCORDING TO MTVZA-GYA DATA

The paper analyzes the possibilities of using the algorithm for sea surface wind speed retrieval from the MTVZA-GYa Russian microwave radiometer measurements for studying the wind fields in the North Atlantic extratropical cyclones. On the basis of analyzing the ASCAT scatterometer wind fields for one year, a database of the North Atlantic extratropical cyclones has been created. Quasisynchronous (within a 2-hour time difference) fields of sea surface wind speed have been constructed from the MTVZA-GYa measurements for the areas of strong (>15 m/s) and storm (>25 m/s) winds in the cyclones. The wind fields retrieved from the AMSR2 and MTVZA-GYa data have been recalculated to a single regular grid. Daily and monthly mean biases and root-mean-square errors of retrieval have been estimated for different ranges of wind speed. Analysis of the differences has shown that the algorithm for the wind speed retrieval from the MTVZA-GYa data systematically underestimates the speed of high (>15 m/s) winds in extratropical cyclones.