Validation of High Ocean Surface Winds from Satellites Using Oil Platform Anemometers

AbstractReliable sources for validating wind observations made by spaceborne microwave radiometer and scatterometer sensors above 15 ms−1 are scarce. Anemometers mounted on oil platforms provide usable wind speed measurements that can help fill this gap. In our study we compare wind speed observations from 6 microwave satellites (WindSat, AMSR-E, AMSR2, SMAP, QuikSCAT, ASCAT) with wind speed records from 10 oil platform anemometers in the North Sea and Norwegian Sea that were provided by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. We study various forms of the vertical wind profile, which is required to convert anemometer winds to a reference height of 10m above sea level. We create and analyze match-ups between satellite and anemometer winds and find good agreement up to wind speeds of 30 ms−1 within the margin of errors. We also evaluate wind speeds from several analyses (ECMWF, NCEP, CCMP). We find them to be significantly lower than the anemometer winds with their biases increasing systematically with inc...