Comparison of wind data from ERA-Interim and buoys in the Yellow and East China Seas -- Journal of Oceanology and Limnology,2015,33(1):282-288

	Cite this paper:
	SONG Lina, LIU Zhiliang, WANG Fan. Comparison of wind data from ERA-Interim and buoys in the Yellow and East China Seas[J]. Journal of Oceanology and Limnology, 2015, 33(1): 282-288

Comparison of wind data from ERA-Interim and buoys in the Yellow and East China Seas

SONG Lina^1,2, LIU Zhiliang¹, WANG Fan¹

1 Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Waves (KLOCAW), Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China;
2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

Abstract:

We compared data of sea surface wind from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Reanalysis (ERA-Interim) with that collected from eight buoys deployed in the Yellow and East China seas. The buoy data covered a period from 2010 to 2011, during which the longest time series without missing data extended for 329 days. Results show that the ERA-Interim wind data agree well with the buoy data. The regression coefficients between the ERA-Interim and observed wind speed and direction are greater than 0.7 and 0.79, respectively. However, the ERA-Interim wind data overestimate wind speed at most of the buoy stations, for which the largest bias is 1.8 m/s. Moreover, it is found from scatter plots of wind direction that about 13% of the ERA-Interim wind data can be classified as bad for wind speeds below 6 m/s. Overall, the ERA-Interim data forecast both the wind speed and direction well, although they are not very representative of our observations, especially those where the wind speed is below 6 m/s.

Key words: ERA-Interim|comparison|wind|buoy data

Received: 2013-12-12 Revised: 2014-04-30

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Articles by SONG Lina

Articles by LIU Zhiliang

Articles by WANG Fan

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