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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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:eea54866024740338cfab83193ed1ed6 2023-05-15T17:36:16+02:00 A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices Shawn R. Smith Renee Richardson Justin P. Stow Mark A. Bourassa Homer McMillan 2021-05-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 https://doaj.org/article/eea54866024740338cfab83193ed1ed6 EN eng Frontiers Media S.A. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.661473/full https://doaj.org/toc/2296-6463 2296-6463 doi:10.3389/feart.2021.661473 https://doaj.org/article/eea54866024740338cfab83193ed1ed6 Frontiers in Earth Science, Vol 9 (2021) marine climatology winds precipitation climatic index Atlantic Ocean Gulf of Mexico Science Q article 2021 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 2022-12-31T15:35:51Z 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 Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Frontiers in Earth Science 9 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
marine climatology winds precipitation climatic index Atlantic Ocean Gulf of Mexico Science Q |
spellingShingle |
marine climatology winds precipitation climatic index Atlantic Ocean Gulf of Mexico Science Q Shawn R. Smith Renee Richardson Justin P. Stow Mark A. Bourassa Homer McMillan A New Technique for Century-Scale Wind Component Indices |
topic_facet |
marine climatology winds precipitation climatic index Atlantic Ocean Gulf of Mexico Science Q |
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. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Shawn R. Smith Renee Richardson Justin P. Stow Mark A. Bourassa Homer McMillan |
author_facet |
Shawn R. Smith Renee Richardson Justin P. Stow Mark A. Bourassa Homer McMillan |
author_sort |
Shawn R. Smith |
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 S.A. |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 https://doaj.org/article/eea54866024740338cfab83193ed1ed6 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
Frontiers in Earth Science, Vol 9 (2021) |
op_relation |
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.661473/full https://doaj.org/toc/2296-6463 2296-6463 doi:10.3389/feart.2021.661473 https://doaj.org/article/eea54866024740338cfab83193ed1ed6 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.661473 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Earth Science |
container_volume |
9 |
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1766135711637962752 |