A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices
Advancing the understanding of how variations in the climate over the ocean influences the weather over the United States can be aided by developing marine climatic indices. Herein, wind component indices are developed using nearly 125 years of wind observations from ships. A new technique using pro...
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.661473/full |
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crfrontiers:10.3389/feart.2021.661473 2024-02-11T10:06:42+01:00 A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices Smith, Shawn R. Richardson, Renee Stow, Justin P. Bourassa, Mark A. McMillan, Homer Climate Program Office 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.661473/full unknown Frontiers Media SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Frontiers in Earth Science volume 9 ISSN 2296-6463 General Earth and Planetary Sciences journal-article 2021 crfrontiers https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 2024-01-26T10:05:22Z Advancing the understanding of how variations in the climate over the ocean influences the weather over the United States can be aided by developing marine climatic indices. Herein, wind component indices are developed using nearly 125 years of wind observations from ships. A new technique using probability density functions for the values of meridional and zonal wind components is developed to create indices for a user-selected region and accumulation interval (e.g., annual or seasonal) over a climatological period. The index is a measure of the shift in the likelihood of values above or below a threshold for a given season or year as compared to the long-term (e.g., 125 year) probability distribution. The new index method is demonstrated using ship-based wind observations for select regions of the Atlantic Ocean. Ship observations are extracted from release 3.0.0 of the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set. Prior to index creation, an assessment of wind data quality is completed, and suspect observations are removed. The method to create a probabilistic wind component index is described along with a metric of the uncertainty in the calculated index. Two wind component indices, for regions in the north Atlantic and eastern Gulf of Mexico, are presented to demonstrate the technique. Using the Gulf of Mexico index as a case study, we compare the wind component indices to precipitation measured over the Gulf coastal states and identify several relationships between multi-year changes in winds in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and precipitation on a seasonal basis. Exploring the spatiotemporal patterns of the onshore/offshore component wind indices derived from seasonal wind forecasts could provide a metric for future prediction of seasonal or annual precipitation to support the agricultural sector. The index method demonstrated can be applied to other spatiotemporal regions for different parameters and using other source datasets. Article in Journal/Newspaper North Atlantic Frontiers (Publisher) Frontiers in Earth Science 9 |
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Frontiers (Publisher) |
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topic |
General Earth and Planetary Sciences |
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General Earth and Planetary Sciences Smith, Shawn R. Richardson, Renee Stow, Justin P. Bourassa, Mark A. McMillan, Homer A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices |
topic_facet |
General Earth and Planetary Sciences |
description |
Advancing the understanding of how variations in the climate over the ocean influences the weather over the United States can be aided by developing marine climatic indices. Herein, wind component indices are developed using nearly 125 years of wind observations from ships. A new technique using probability density functions for the values of meridional and zonal wind components is developed to create indices for a user-selected region and accumulation interval (e.g., annual or seasonal) over a climatological period. The index is a measure of the shift in the likelihood of values above or below a threshold for a given season or year as compared to the long-term (e.g., 125 year) probability distribution. The new index method is demonstrated using ship-based wind observations for select regions of the Atlantic Ocean. Ship observations are extracted from release 3.0.0 of the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set. Prior to index creation, an assessment of wind data quality is completed, and suspect observations are removed. The method to create a probabilistic wind component index is described along with a metric of the uncertainty in the calculated index. Two wind component indices, for regions in the north Atlantic and eastern Gulf of Mexico, are presented to demonstrate the technique. Using the Gulf of Mexico index as a case study, we compare the wind component indices to precipitation measured over the Gulf coastal states and identify several relationships between multi-year changes in winds in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and precipitation on a seasonal basis. Exploring the spatiotemporal patterns of the onshore/offshore component wind indices derived from seasonal wind forecasts could provide a metric for future prediction of seasonal or annual precipitation to support the agricultural sector. The index method demonstrated can be applied to other spatiotemporal regions for different parameters and using other source datasets. |
author2 |
Climate Program Office |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Smith, Shawn R. Richardson, Renee Stow, Justin P. Bourassa, Mark A. McMillan, Homer |
author_facet |
Smith, Shawn R. Richardson, Renee Stow, Justin P. Bourassa, Mark A. McMillan, Homer |
author_sort |
Smith, Shawn R. |
title |
A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices |
title_short |
A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices |
title_full |
A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices |
title_fullStr |
A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices |
title_full_unstemmed |
A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices |
title_sort |
new technique for century-scale wind component indices |
publisher |
Frontiers Media SA |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.661473/full |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
Frontiers in Earth Science volume 9 ISSN 2296-6463 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Earth Science |
container_volume |
9 |
_version_ |
1790604595666354176 |