Comparison of wind data from ERA-Interim and buoys in the Yellow and East China Seas

We compared data of sea surface wind from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Reanalysis(ERA-Interim) with that collected from eight buoys deployed in the Yellow and East China seas.The buoy data covered a period from 2010 to 2011,during which the longest time series without missing data extended for 329 days.Results show that the ERA-Interim wind data agree well with the buoy data.The regression coefficients between the ERA-Interim and observed wind speed and direction are greater than 0.7 and 0.79,respectively.However,the ERA-Interim wind data overestimate wind speed at most of the buoy stations,for which the largest bias is 1.8 m/s.Moreover,it is found from scatter plots of wind direction that about 13%of the ERA-Interim wind data can be classified as bad for wind speeds below6 m/s.Overall,the ERA-Interim data forecast both the wind speed and direction well,although they are not very representative of our observations,especially those where the wind speed is below 6 m/s.