Quality Assessment of MAXSS Global Merged Wind Products under Tropical Cyclone Conditions

The continuous monitoring of Tropical Cyclones (TCs) plays a crucial role in exploring TC dynamics and enabling more timely disaster responses by coastal communities. However, a mature and widely recognized dataset depicting long-term TC development is still lacking, whether in terms of satellite observations or reanalyses. The Marine Atmosphere eXtreme Satellite Synergy (MAXSS) project recently released a new global merged wind product, offering hourly 10-m stress-equivalent wind maps on a 0.25
^◦
grid. The project aims to enhance understanding of multi-scale air-sea interactions under extreme conditions, making the new wind product an excellent option for long-term TC research. In this study, the quality of MAXSS winds under TC conditions was assessed through statistical analysis, morphological analysis, and spatial variance evaluation. The statistical comparison among SAR, ASCAT, and MAXSS winds indicates a good consistency between SAR and MAXSS wind speeds, but an apparent overestimation of MAXSS winds compared to ASCAT results, aligning with our expectations. Notably, the wind sensitivity of MAXSS winds can be up to approximately 45m/s meanwhile in relatively lower noise or uncertainties. It suggests the great potential of the MAXSS products in TC research. However, the blurring effects persist in the products, behaving as the extension of TC eyewall structures and the loss of small-scale information. In summary, MAXSS has introduced a new and powerful global merged wind product suitable for TC studies. The preliminary quality assessment presented in the paper proves the value of these products. Nevertheless, some further improvements in TC inner structures could contribute to the more effective application of these products in the future.