Performance assessment of a Persian Gulf wind and wave forecasting system

ABSTRACT

Data from three satellites (JASON2, CRYOSAT, and SARAL/AltiKa) and two buoys were used to examine the performance of wind and wave forecasting models in the Persian Gulf. The quality of the satellite data was first examined by comparing them with buoy data. Wind speed data from all three satellites were found to be close to in situ measurements; for wave heights, SARAL/AltiKa data showed the best comparisons. Model forecasts and buoy data indicated correlation coefficients between 0.72 and 0.86 for wind speeds and 0.85–0.94 for wave heights. The forecast was more accurate at the open sea buoy than at the coastal buoy. Relative to SARAL/AltiKa data, which was preferred for assessing modelled wave heights, correlation coefficients were between 0.86 and 0.90. For modelled wind speeds, correlation coefficients with the consolidated satellite dataset were between 0.80 and 0.88. Some anomalous results were partly attributed to the exclusion of air–sea temperature differences. The likelihood of a given forecast representing a given sea state was estimated. Generally, for lead times up to 48 h, a user could have a 78–92% expectation that a SWH forecast > 1 m would lie within ±30% of a sea-state represented by the SARAL/AltiKa measurements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of the Qatar Foundation) under Grant NPRP 7-660-1-124. Assistance provided by Dr Krishna Kumar of the Qatar Meteorological Department is gratefully acknowledged. Recommendations offered by two reviewers have resulted in an improved paper.

Notes on contributors

Sandeepan B. S.

Sandeepan B. S. is currently working as Scientist at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India. His area of research is air quality and weather modelling. He started his research career after earning an MSc degree from the Cochin University of Science and Technology and a PhD from the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (in India). After conducting postdoctoral research at Texas A&M University at Qatar, he worked as project scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (in India). He is the author of several peer-reviewed journal papers.

Sashikant Nayak

Sashikant Nayak holds the position of Assistant Professor in the School of Applied Sciences and School of Biotechnology at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (Bhubaneswar, India) where he teaches Engineering Mathematics. He has eleven years of research experience in ocean wave modelling and oceanography. He received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur). He worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Texas A&M University at Qatar and at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, before joining his current position. He has authored and co-authored several articles in various peer reviewed journals.

Vijay Panchang

Vijay Panchang holds the position of Professor in the Ocean Engineering Department at Texas A&M University, where he has served in a variety of positions including Department Head and Program Chair over the past twenty years at multiple campus locations. He has over thirty-five years of experience in coastal hydraulics and modeling. He is a co-Editor of “Advances in Coastal Hydraulics” published in 2018 and the author of numerous papers in various journals. He was previously the Editor of the Journal of Waterway, Port, Coasta, and Ocean Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Maine (USA), and prior to coming to Texas A&M University, he served on the Civil Engineering faculty at the University of Maine and as Program Director at the National Sea Grant Office (of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA.