Open AccessAn Assessment of Marine Surface Winds from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Numerical Weather Prediction Systems
Author(s) -
Eric Schulz,
Jeffrey D. Kepert,
Diana Greenslade
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
weather and forecasting
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.393
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1520-0434
pISSN - 0882-8156
DOI - 10.1175/waf996.1
Subject(s) - scatterometer , environmental science , numerical weather prediction , meteorology , climatology , storm , wind speed , zonal and meridional , boundary layer , satellite , winter storm , atmospheric sciences , geology , geography , physics , thermodynamics , aerospace engineering , engineering
A method for routinely verifying numerical weather prediction surface marine winds with satellite scatterometer winds is introduced. The marine surface winds from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s operational global and regional numerical weather prediction systems are evaluated. The model marine surface layer is described. Marine surface winds from the global and limited-area models are compared with observations, both in situ (anemometer) and remote (scatterometer). A 2-yr verification shows that wind speeds from the regional model are typically underestimated by approximately 5%, with a greater bias in the meridional direction than the zonal direction. The global model also underestimates the surface winds by around 5%–10%. A case study of a significant marine storm shows that where larger errors occur, they are due to an underestimation of the storm intensity, rather than to biases in the boundary layer parameterizations.