Abstract
Wind and wave data are essential in climatological and engineering design applications. In this study, data from 15 buoys located throughout the South China Sea (SCS) were used to evaluate the ERA5 wind and wave data. Applicability assessment are beneficial for gaining insight into the reliability of the ERA5 data in the SCS. The bias range between the ERA5 and observed wind-speed data was −0.78–0.99 m/s. The result indicates that, while the ERA5 wind-speed data underestimation was dominate, the overestimation of such data existed as well. Additionally, the ERA5 data underestimated annual maximum wind-speed by up to 38%, with a correlation coefficient >0.87. The bias between the ERA5 and observed significant wave height (SWH) data varied from −0.24 to 0.28 m. And the ERA5 data showed positive SWH bias, which implied a general underestimation at all locations, except those in the Beibu Gulf and central-western SCS, where overestimation was observed. Under extreme conditions, annual maximum SWH in the ERA5 data was underestimated by up to 30%. The correlation coefficients between the ERA5 and observed SWH data at all locations were greater than 0.92, except in the central-western SCS (0.84). The bias between the ERA5 and observed mean wave period (MWP) data varied from −0.74 to 0.57 s. The ERA5 data showed negative MWP biases implying a general overestimation at all locations, except for B1 (the Beibu Gulf) and B7 (the northeastern SCS), where underestimation was observed. The correlation coefficient between the ERA5 and observed MWP data in the Beibu Gulf was the smallest (0.56), and those of other locations fluctuated within a narrow range from 0.82 to 0.90. The intercomparison indicates that during the analyzed time-span, the ERA5 data generally underestimated wind-speed and SWH, but overestimated MWP. Under non-extreme conditions, the ERA5 wind-speed and SWH data can be used with confidence in most regions of the SCS, except in the central-western SCS.
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Data Availability Statement
These data are available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5816765). All the data processing were performed using MATLAB.
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We thank the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts for providing the valuable data used in this study.
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Supported by the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) (No. SML2021SP102), the Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Survey Technology and Application, Ministry of Natural Resources (Nos. MESTA-2020-C003, MESTA-2020-C004), the Key Research and Development Project of Guangdong Province (No. 2020B1111020003), and the Science and Technology Research Project of Jiangxi Provincial Department of Education (No. GJJ200330)
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Zhai, R., Huang, C., Yang, W. et al. Applicability evaluation of ERA5 wind and wave reanalysis data in the South China Sea. J. Ocean. Limnol. 41, 495–517 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-022-2047-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-022-2047-8