North West Shelf Joint Environmental Management Study:InVitro Inputs- NCEP Winds

Wind-induced currents are among the strongest currents in the oceanic surface layer. Winds drive ocean currents by transferring momentum to this layer. The important quantity in this process is the wind stress, which is a quadratic function of wind speed. The data used in this project were produced by the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis project. NCEP and NCAR are cooperating in a project to produce a 40-year record of global analyses of atmospheric fields in support of the needs of the research and climate monitoring communities. The wind-stress dataset covers the period 1965 to 1997 and contains the following fields from which the velocity vector (speed and direction) were calculated: .zonal wind stress .meridional wind stress