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Publications
Campos, R. and Guedes Soares C. (2017), “Assessment of Three Wind Reanalysis in the North Atlantic Ocean", Journal of Operational Oceanography, Vol. 10(1), pp. 30-44
This paper compares four surface wind datasets: GFS/NOAA, ERA-40/ECMWF, NCEP/NCAR-reanalysis2 and REMO. GFS is an operational atmospheric model, which has been broadly used mainly for weather forecasts and for providing boundary conditions to wave and ocean models. ERA-40 and NCEP/NCAR-reanalysis2 have been probably the mostly used reanalysis so far and REMO is a hindcast produced within a European Project created to improve the wind resolution and accuracy over the North Atlantic. Differences concerning all data and the values over the 99% quantiles were calculated. In order to compare the described datasets, the coincident periods and geographical areas were determined, which corresponds to the years between 1997 and 2001, latitudes between 20º and 65º North and longitudes between 50º West and 0º, in the North Atlantic Ocean. The comparison results show that, under calm wind situations, the agreement among datasets is excellent. However, an increasing difference was found under extreme conditions. The main contribution to the differences is the meridional component of wind, which is more evident when comparing GFS with the other datasets analysed. The pairs of REMO - NCEP/NCAR followed by REMO - ERA40 showed a great similarity even under extreme conditions. The datasets REMO, followed by NCEP/NCAR, appears to have the highest wind intensities, followed by GFS and ERA-40. The spatial analysis indicated very often a pattern of increasing divergences above 45º N and close to the coasts of Africa and Europe. The monthly average evolution showed a tendency of agreement during the summer and large differences in the winter, when cyclones at mid-high latitudes are more intense.
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