the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 14 Oct 2025
A Global Surface Turbulence Heat Flux Dataset resolving tropical cyclones
Abstract. The Global Surface Turbulence Heat Flux Dataset (GHFD) presents a dataset of surface latent heat flux and sensible heat flux, at spatial resolutions of 0.25°×0.25° and daily available from 1993 to 2023. The GHFD is generated using the IBTrACS, OISST, CCMP, Copernicus Marine, and ERA5 datasets, with the wind speed field adjusted to incorporate tropical cyclone (TC) information and using the COARE 3.6 algorithm to conduct the heat flux calculations. The GHFD includes seven meteorological elements at the air-sea interface, including surface latent and sensible heat flux, 2-m specific humidity, sea surface temperature, 2-m air temperature, sea surface salinity and 10-m wind speed. A comparison between GHFD and various flux products (J-OFURO 3, OAFlux, ifremerflux) in terms of the fundamental components is conducted with moored observation data, in-situ observation data, and high-resolution simulation data. Results show an improvement of GHFD compared to the other three flux products in resolving TCs. The GHFD dataset in NetCDF format is freely available for download at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.24400 (Peng et al., 2025).
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Status: final response (author comments only)
- RC1: 'Comment on essd-2025-528', Anonymous Referee #1, 12 Feb 2026
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RC2: 'Comment on essd-2025-528', Anonymous Referee #2, 21 Apr 2026
General comments:
The current flux datasets are commonly associated with substantial uncertainties under tropical cyclones. This manuscript presents a new dataset of surface turbulent heat fluxes resolving tropical cyclones by merging various data sources of best track, satellite SST, blended surface winds, and reanalysis datasets using the COARE3.6 algorithm. Validations against observational data and high-resolution simulations show an evident improvement under tropical cyclone conditions compared with other limited-flux datasets. Overall, the work is scientifically meaningful, and the writing is clear and well-organized. It contributes to the community with an improved tropical cyclone-resolved flux data product that can be used for either tropical cyclone or global energy cycle studies. I only have a couple of minor concerns for the authors to consider to improve the work.
Specific comments:
- This dataset is especially useful for tropical cyclone analysis, where the wind speeds are high. The latent and sensible heat fluxes are calculated using Equations 11 and 12, in which Chand Cq are used, Then, what are the relationships between the two variables and the wind speed? In other words, how do the authors determine the Ch and Cq in a high wind speed?
- The manuscript states the importance of global energy budget, especially in a warming climate. How large are the global mean (e.g., 60S-60N) latent and sensible heat fluxes? Please compare with other datasets.
- Some variables are obtained from differentheights, such as 2 m and 10 m. Then the COARE algorithm was used to construct the dataset. There is no depiction of how these variables at different heights are used for the flux calculation. Have the authors conducted a standardization? If not, simply merging them together would introduce bias, though presumably not significantly. If so, an illustration is needed for this procedure.
- Figure 1: Please do not use a yellow background and white font together. The text cannot be well identified.IBTrACs in the blue bottom may change to TC data.
- Figure 7: The ‘two white dotted lines’are not identifiable to me. Please polish this figure or adjust the caption to make them consistent.
- Figure 8c: Is ‘×10-3’correct here?
- Related to equations: Not all the symbols are sufficiently defined, such asVi and Vo. Please double-check them carefully.
- Line 7: Replace ‘daily available from 1993 to 2023’ with ‘available daily from 1993 to 2023’.
- L56, please full spell the CCMP here.
- L35-37, some references should be added.
- While most part of the manuscript is well written, I do find several places of typos or writing problems, as listed below. Please proofread the manuscript much more carefully during the revision:
Line 77: Change ‘origin’ to ‘original’.
Line 175-176: Please rewrite this sentence.
Line 197: Change ‘magnitude’ to ‘magnitudes’, or replace ‘are’ with ‘is’.
Line 203-204: Consider rewriting this sentence.
Line 207: Delete ‘The max’.
Line 224: Delete ‘under high wind speed conditions’.
Line 233: Should it be ‘Francisco’?
Line 233-235: Too long a sentence. Please rewrite it.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-528-RC2
Data sets
A Global Surface Turbulence Heat Flux Dataset resolving tropical cyclones Weixiang Peng, Zhanhong Ma, Deyuan Zhang, Hexin Ye, and Jianfang Fei https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.24400
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Various global datasets for air-sea latent and sensible heat fluxes have been available in recent years. This database is particularly original in its approach to representing aor-sea latent and sensible heat flux within tropical cyclones. However, unfortunately, at the time of review, I was unable to access the site (https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.24400 ).
I would like to commend the efforts regarding the tropical cyclone area, particularly the strong wind distribution. On the other hand, I would like to confirm whether the average wind speed used for evaluating latent and sensible heat fluxes is a 1-minute average or a 10-minute average. In the IBtRACS dataset, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) standard dataset uses 10-minute average wind speeds. However, 1-minute average wind speeds are commonly used when dealing with Atlantic and Eastern Pacific hurricanes. At the very least, this paper should clearly indicate to users which average time scale was used, or whether a 2-minute average was adopted following the China Meteorological Administration's definition.
The results of numerical simulations should describe the specifications used in the simulation (such as the model adopted—whether it is an atmosphere-ocean coupled model—and the horizontal resolution). It is desirable to explicitly state the differences from COARE3.6. In addition to sensible and latent heat fluxes, it is desirable to make comparisons of 2-m air temperature, 2-m specific humidity, and 10-m wind speed. For simulations using an atmosphere-ocean coupled model, comparison of salinity concentrations would be also possible.
Carefully include captions for both the main text and supplementary material to ensure that readers can easily understand. For supplementary material, do not simply list figures and tables; explain which part of the main text they supplement.
There is a scarcity of in-situ observational data beneath tropical depressions for calculating latent and sensible heat fluxes, leaving questions about the reliability of satellite-based estimates. Even with current technology, direct observations using sail drones remain challenging, particularly due to the effects of sea spray and platform sway. In this sense, explaining the significance of releasing this dataset in the introduction serves as a consideration for the general reader to prevent misunderstandings.