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.. _overview:

Overview
========

The TropFlux project aims at providing daily, timely, accurate air-sea heat  flux data for the entire 30°N-30°S region.

The four components of net surface heat flux are currently available for the entire 1989-2010 period. We are currently working on a regular (~monthly) update of the TropFLux product until 3-4 months behind realtime, which should be available by 2012.

TropFlux is largely derived from a combination of `ERA-I <http://www.ecmwf.int/research/era/do/get/era-interim>`_ re-analysis data for turbulent and longwave fluxes, and `ISCCP <http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/>`_ surface radiation data for the shortwave flux. All input products are bias- and amplitude-corrected on the basis of `Global Tropical Moored Array <http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/global/global.html>`_ data, before surface net heat flux is computed using the `COARE v3 bulk algorithm <http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/COARE/flux_algor/>`_. A precise description of the flux computation procedure, as well as a detailed evaluation against other timely, daily air-sea heat flux alternatives (OAFLUX, NCEP, NCEP2, ERA-I) is provided in `Praveen Kumar et al. (2011) <http://www.locean-ipsl.upmc.fr/~tropflux/papers/TropFlux_paper_accepted_r.pdf>`_.

We believe that this product  offers the following advantages:

  - better variability and less biases than re-analysis fluxes (and equivalent performance to OAFLUX)
  - available until the end of 2010, and soon updated every month, lagging realtime by ~3 months
  - a simple estimate of surface shortwave radiation is provided from  OLR data, as a near-realtime alternative to the more accurate but irregularly updated ISCCP data

The TropFLux product has been developed under a collaboration between `Institut Pierre Simon Laplace <http://www.ipsl.fr/>`_, France and `National Institute of Oceanography <http://www.nio.org/>`_, India.