Comparison of wind-stress algorithms and their influence on wind-stress curl using buoy measurements over the shelf off Bodega Bay, California

Despite the apparent biases in computed wind stress and wind-stress curl among the algorithms, all of them show a significant trend of decreasing sea-surface temperature (SST) with increasing wind-stress curl. The bootstrapping analysis has revealed that both the along-shore wind stress and wind-stress curl have noticeable correlation with the changes in the sea-surface temperature as an indirect indication of the upwelling. An additional analysis, based on the low-pass filtered data, showed also significant agreement between the measured divergence in the cross-shore surface transport and the wind-stress curl computed for all three algorithms.