Hi!
I want to use the Net Momentum Flux for my Masters Research, but was wondering if there are any datasets with just zonal and meridional wind stress? Or is it just the net product?
Thank!
Hello Ann. The bulk momentum flux (wind stress) is computed from the wind speed. A separate calculation is not made for the stress direction. In other words it is assumed that the stress and wind vectors point in the same direction. To separate stress into zonal and meridional components you should use the wind direction.
Note that the automatically computed bulk fluxes from the METBK meteorological data are meant to be a helpful “quick look” data set. The computation has some dependencies - most notably the presumed existence of near-surface velocity from a separate sensor - and the METBK data may have performance issues on a given deployment. Thus, for research purposes users are encouraged to examine the meteorological and related data streams and compute the bulk fluxes themselves, e.g. using an algorithm like COARE 3.5 (Edson et al., 2013, DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-12-0173.1).