Comparison of ETA winds and met buoy winds

Les Bender did a very careful study of wind observations as compared to the ETA wind forcasts. The bottom line is that correlation coefficients are between 0.8 and 0.9, meaning that we will not be able to improve this much. This is good news, however, since the correlation is better than we were thinking it might be. It seems that the modeled winds are indeed capturing most of the sea breeze signal.


Les writes:

Here are the preliminary results of analyzing the ETA-12 model winds and
observations taken from 5 TABS buoys, 6 NDBC buoys, and 3 CMAN stations. I
used the ETA-12 hindcast winds, provided by Matt, for the period from
15-Feb-2003 to 31-Oct-2003.

Bottom line: There is room for improvement, though it appears to me that the
NDBC and CMAN winds are already being assimilated.

The Kundu vector correlations and angle of rotation between model and
observations are as follows:

Buoy Correlation Angle, deg Comments
---- ----------- ---------- --------
TABS B 0.858 +1.73
TABS J 0.686 -34.57 The TABS wind sensor is highly suspect during this
period.
TABS K 0.816 +6.06
TABS N 0.832 +10.89
TABS V 0.763 -18.76
NDBC 42001 0.810 -2.91
NDBC 42002 0.800 -15.79
NDBC 42019 0.889 -6.24
NDBC 42020 0.900 -5.20
NDBC 42035 0.893 -5.59
NDBC 42041 0.851 -6.30
CMAN BURL1 0.858 +1.59
CMAN PTAT2 0.885 -17.81
CMAN SRST2 0.848 -4.27

The difference between N and V is striking. It could indicate that one or
both of the wind sensors was faulty.

I have attached a map showing the LATEX region, the model grid points, and
the observation sites. Each of the other figures are, I hope, self
explanatory.

Images are available for comparisons between the winds at these station positions.

NDBC buoy 42001
NDBC buoy 42002
NDBC buoy 42019
NDBC buoy 42020
NDBC buoy 42035
NDBC buoy 42041
NDBC buoy BURL1
NDBC buoy PTAT2
NDBC buoy SRST2

TABS buoy B
TABS buoy J
TABS buoy K
TABS buoy N
TABS buoy V