Mapped fields of surface geostrophic currents based on altimetry, and fields of sea surface winds, cloud-free sea surface temperature and chlorophyll concentration using monovariate OI and a multivariate EOF technique

There is an increasing demand for regional oceanic models capable of simulating the regional ocean circulation. Accurate surface forcing functions are necessary to achieve this goal. Here we present analyses of several data sets covering the contiguous eastern Gulf of Mexico and southeast Atlantic: a) Wind fields resulting from the blending by optimal interpolation (OI) of NCEP, in situ and QuikSCAT winds. These winds show improvements in the coastal region, where orography and coastal boundary layer effects are important and under-resolved. b) Cloud-free SST, created by merging several SST sources using OI. c) Cloud-free chlorophyll, also created using OI. d) Surface drifter trajectories, generated from geostrophic currents and used to track water masses, with application to the Mississippi River outflow subsequent to Hurricane Katrina. e) Multivariate cloud-free products, using SST and chlorophyll, and SST and QuikSCAT winds, to obtain more accurate reconstructions than the monovariate equivalents. We use an EOF-based method, called DINEOF, which has proven to give similar results to OI-based reconstruction but up to 30 times faster, making it very suitable for operational applications. These data sets, originally created for the West Florida Shelf, have been expanded for the Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System (SEACOOS) and for broader environmental applications.