Goddard Satellite-Based Surface Turbulent Fluxes, 1x1 deg Monthly Climatology, Set1 and NCEP V2c (GSSTFMC)

However, a temporal trend appeared in the globally averaged LHF of GSSTF2b, particularly post year 2000. Shie (2010a,b) attributed the LHF trend to the trends originally found in the globally averaged SSM/I Tb's, i.e., Tb(19v), Tb(19h), Tb(22v) and Tb(37v), which were used to retrieve the GSSTF2b bottom-layer (the lowest atmospheric 500 meter layer) precipitable water [WB], then the surface specific humidity [Qa], and subsequently LHF.

The SSM/I Tb's trends were recently found mainly due to the variations/trends of Earth incidence angle (EIA) in the SSM/I satellites (Hilburn and Shie 2011a,b). They have further developed an algorithm properly resolving the EIA problem and successfully reproducing the corrected Tb's by genuinely removing the "artifactitious" trends. An upgraded production of GSSTF2c (Shie et al. 2011) using the corrected Tb's has been completed very recently.

GSSTF2c shows a significant improvement in the resultant WB, and subsequently the retrieved LHF - the temporal trends of WB and LHF are greatly reduced after the proper adjustments/treatments in the SSM/I Tb's (Shie and Hilburn 2011). In closing, we believe that the insightful "Rice Cooker Theory" by Shie (2010a,b), i.e., "To produce a good and trustworthy 'output product' (delicious 'cooked rice') depends not only on a well-functioned 'model/algorithm' ('rice cooker'), but also on a genuine and reliable 'input data' ('raw rice') with good quality" should help us better comprehend the impact of the improved Tb on the subsequently retrieved LHF of GSSTF2c.

This is the Monthly Climatology product; data are projected to equidistant Grid that covers the globe at 1x1 degree cell size, resulting in data arrays of 360x180 size. Starting with Version 2c, there is only one set of Combined data, "Set1". The Monthly Climatology HDF-EOS5 file also contains one extra grid of NCEP Climatology, "NCEP".

A finer resolution, 0.25 deg, of this product has been released as Version 3. The monthly temporal and one-degree spatial resolution of the product can be used to examining climate variability at these scales. Oceanic evaporation contributes to the net fresh water input to the oceans and drives the upper ocean density structure and consequently the circulation of the oceans.

The short name for this product is GSSTFMC.