An improved near-surface velocity climatology for the global ocean from drifter observations

It is demonstrated that (1) the correction of drifter slip bias produces statistically similar mean velocities for both drogued and undrogued drifter datasets at most latitudes and reduces differences between their variance estimates, (2) the proposed decomposition method produces pseudo-Eulerian mean fields with magnitudes and horizontal scales closer to time-averaged Eulerian observations than other methods, and (3) standard errors calculated for pseudo-Eulerian quantities underestimate the real errors by a factor of almost two. The improved decomposition method and the inclusion of undrogued drifters in the analysis allows resolving details of the time-mean circulation not well defined in the previous version of the climatology, such as the cross-stream structure of western boundary currents, recirculation cells, and zonally-elongated mid-ocean striations.