IMOS - Ships of Opportunity - Air-Sea Flux: Flux product from the Research Vessel Aurora Australis

This dataset contains quality controlled meteorological observations and bulk air-sea fluxes.

As part of the Ships of Opportunity - Research Vessels Real-Time Air-Sea Flux (ASF) Sub-Facility, R.V. Aurora Australis collects underway meteorological and oceanographic observations during scientific and Antarctic resupply voyages in the oceans adjacent to Australia.

Data streams are fed into the existing ship data management system, and broadcast via satellite back to Australia 30 minutes. The observations are quality controlled at the Bureau of Meteorology and air-sea fluxes calculated using the COARE Bulk Flux algorithm.

A daily file of 5-minute average calculated bulk fluxes are generated shortly after 0000UTC and provided to the AODN.

The data is contained in NetCDF format files and consists of input QC'd meteorological observations as well as calculated air-sea fluxes. The fluxes are calculated using the COARE Bulk Flux algorithm version 3.0. Input observations are selected from multiple data-streams in the cases of; wind (upwind instrument selected); air temperature and humidity (upwind instrument selected), and short (maximum value used) and long-wave (minimum value used). Other input observations included are sea surface temperatures (SST) and air pressure. Calculated fluxes include, sensible heat, latent heat, outgoing long-wave, outgoing short-wave and heat due to precipitation. The calculated skin SST value is included. Flags are provided to indicate which sensor (when multiple are available) has been used as input to compute the flux. QC flags are not provided as fluxes are only computed when good data is available.