Evaluation of reanalysis surface wind products with quality-assured buoy wind measurements along the north coast of the South China Sea

Three archived reanalysis wind vectors at 10 m height in the wind speed range of 2–15 m/s, namely, the second version of the National Centres for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSv2), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting Interim Reanalysis (ERA-I) and NCEP-Department of Energy (DOE) Reanalysis 2 (NCEP-2) products, are evaluated by a comparison with the winds measured by moored buoys in coastal regions of the South China Sea (SCS). The buoy data are first quality controlled by extensive techniques that help eliminate degraded measurements. The evaluation results reveal that the CFSv2 wind vectors are most consistent with the buoy winds (with average biases of 0.01 m/s and 1.76°). The ERA-I winds significantly underestimate the buoy wind speed (with an average bias of −1.57 m/s), while the statistical errors in the NCEP-2 wind direction have the largest magnitude. The diagnosis of the reanalysis wind errors shows the residuals of all three reanalysis wind speeds (reanalysis-buoy) decrease with increasing buoy wind speed, suggesting a narrower wind speed range than that of the observations. Moreover, wind direction errors are examined to depend on the magnitude of the wind speed and the wind speed biases. In general, the evaluation of three reanalysis wind products demonstrates that CFSv2 wind vectors are the closest to the winds along the north coast of the SCS and are sufficiently accurate to be used in numerical models.