Daily global sea surface ageostrophic current dataset from 1993–2023 via physics-informed deep learning
7 affiliations
- 1State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City, Department of Ocean Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macau, China
- 2Center for Ocean Research in Hong Kong and Macau (CORE), Hong Kong, China
- 3State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Macau, Macau, China
- 4Department of Ocean Science and Engineering and Center for Complex Flows and Soft Matter Research, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
- 5State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Macau, Macau, China
- 6State Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, Institute of Oceanographic Instrumentation, Shandong Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China
- 7Key Laboratory of Computing Power Network and Information Security, Ministry of Education, Shandong Computer Science Center, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan, China
Abstract
Surface ocean circulation shapes climate, air–sea exchange, and the transport of heat, carbon, and other tracers, yet most long-term global datasets rely primarily on geostrophic balance and therefore miss important ageostrophic motions. Here, we reconstruct global daily sea surface circulation at 0.25° resolution from 1993 to 2023 using a physics-informed framework that integrates satellite altimetry with momentum constraints from geostrophic balance, wind stress, and nonlinear advection (Cui, 2026; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19966716). The resulting dataset is dynamically consistent, with a mean momentum balance error below 1.5 %, and reduces the median velocity error against independent mooring observations across the tropical Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans to 0.07 m s⁻¹, compared with 0.20 m s⁻¹ for geostrophic currents and 0.10 m s⁻¹ for Ekman corrected currents. We show that geostrophic flow sets the large-scale circulation, whereas Ekman and nonlinear contributions are smaller but comparable in magnitude to each other. Although nonlinear advection contributes little to relative vorticity, it strongly shapes surface divergence and the fine scale structure of eddy kinetic energy. Our results show that nonlinear ageostrophic flow is an essential component of global surface circulation and that neglecting it limits our ability to resolve surface transport and variability on climatically relevant scales.
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BibTeX
@article{cui2026daily,
title = {{Daily global sea surface ageostrophic current dataset from 1993–2023 via physics-informed deep learning}},
author = {G. Cui and G. Cui and K.-V. Yuen and Y. Chen and Y. Chen and Z. Liu and D. Yang and G. Liu and G. Liu and Z. Cai and Z. Cai},
journal = {Earth System Science Data},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.5194/essd-18-8149-2026},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-8149-2026},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Daily global sea surface ageostrophic current dataset from 1993–2023 via physics-informed deep learning
AU - G. Cui
AU - G. Cui
AU - K.-V. Yuen
AU - Y. Chen
AU - Y. Chen
AU - Z. Liu
AU - D. Yang
AU - G. Liu
AU - G. Liu
AU - Z. Cai
AU - Z. Cai
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/06
JO - Earth System Science Data
DO - 10.5194/essd-18-8149-2026
UR - https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-8149-2026
AB - Surface ocean circulation shapes climate, air–sea exchange, and the transport of heat, carbon, and other tracers, yet most long-term global datasets rely primarily on geostrophic balance and therefore miss important ageostrophic motions. Here, we reconstruct global daily sea surface circulation at 0.25° resolution from 1993 to 2023 using a physics-informed framework that integrates satellite altimetry with momentum constraints from geostrophic balance, wind stress, and nonlinear advection (Cui, 2026; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19966716). The resulting dataset is dynamically consistent, with a mean momentum balance error below 1.5 %, and reduces the median velocity error against independent mooring observations across the tropical Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans to 0.07 m s⁻¹, compared with 0.20 m s⁻¹ for geostrophic currents and 0.10 m s⁻¹ for Ekman corrected currents. We show that geostrophic flow sets the large-scale circulation, whereas Ekman and nonlinear contributions are smaller but comparable in magnitude to each other. Although nonlinear advection contributes little to relative vorticity, it strongly shapes surface divergence and the fine scale structure of eddy kinetic energy. Our results show that nonlinear ageostrophic flow is an essential component of global surface circulation and that neglecting it limits our ability to resolve surface transport and variability on climatically relevant scales.
SN - 1866-3508
SN - 1866-3516
ER -