trends in marine winds adjusted for changes in observation method, 1980-2002 bridget r. thomas 1,...
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TRENDS IN MARINE WINDS ADJUSTED FOR CHANGES IN
OBSERVATION METHOD, 1980-2002
Bridget R. Thomas1, Elizabeth C. Kent2, Val R. Swail3 and David I. Berry2
1 and 3Meteorological Service of Canada, Climate Research Branch, 1Dartmouth, NS & 3Downsview, ON
2National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK
Trends in Marine Winds Aim: Identify and remove spurious trends in ICOADS Winds
o Cardone et al. (1990, On trends in historical marine data. J. Climate) found that in the period 1946 to 1984, trends could be removed by adjusting winds using observing method metadata. Is this still true?
Datao ICOADS winds and observation method flago Metadata on observing heights (WMO Pub. 47)
Methodo Use only data of known method (restricts to 1980 - 2002)o Adjust for anemometer height and observing methodo Compare datasets of 5˚ x 5˚ area monthly mean winds for
subsets defined by sufficient metadata Results
o Using metadata and adjusting for height removes most but not all of the increasing trend
o Spurious trend in visual winds increases following adjustment
ICOADS Quasi-global (all available data) mean wind speed, no adjustments applied for measurement methods
The Evolving Marine Wind Observing System
Changing observing method:
o transition from visual estimates based on sea
state to more measurements by anemometers
Changing ships:
o Ships are getting bigger over time
• higher anemometers
• higher observing platforms for visual winds
• as a result, flow distortion biases may change
over time (see poster by Moat et al.)
The Evolving Marine Wind Observing System (2)
Changing logging methods (measured winds):
o Anemometer "Eye-ball" average of dial or readout
(biased to gusts?)
o Average of continually logged data stream (true mean)
o TurboWin height correction (only for a few years;
stopped at 2002)
o Changing method to calculate true wind from the
relative wind and the ship’s motion
Partial Solutions to Account for Changes
ICOADS contains a wind indicator flag (WI) which
indicates measured or estimated, and original
units; WMO Pub. 47 gives ship metadata
For wind reports identified as measured, we
adjust the winds for anemometer height, to a 10
m reference level
For wind reports identified as estimated, we
adjust the winds using the Lindau (1995)
improved Beaufort equivalent scale
Correction Methods for Wind Observations
Visual Winds (or estimated: WI = 0, 2, 3, 5)o Beaufort Scale adjustments applied following Lindau (1995): A
new Beaufort equivalent scale, Proceedings of the International COADS Winds Workshop, Kiel, Germany, 232-252.
Anemometer Winds (or measured: WI = 1, 4, 7, 8)o Adjusted to 10m height assuming neutral stability
• Over much of the ocean a good approximation• In unstable conditions winds will be slightly over corrected• In stable conditions winds will be under corrected, possibly
significantly, but these conditions are not commono Individual anemometer heights from WMO Pub. 47o Anemometer wind data were not used in this analysis if no
height was available
1) Before adjustment to 10m
Comparison of Winds of Different Methods
2) After adjustment to 10m
Comparison of Winds of Different Methods
3) Comparison to Reanalyses 10m winds
Comparison of Winds of Different Methods
Results so far
Adjusting the winds to 10m reduces the overall trend from 0.7 ms-1 to 0.5 ms-1 over 23 years: 1980 - 2002
Agreement between the trend in visual and anemometer winds worsens over the period
The trend in the visual winds actually increases (the correction applied increases as the winds increase)
NCEP1 and ERA40 Reanalysis 10m winds show little or no increase over the period for this area
10m anemometer winds increase by 0.2 ms-1, the visuals by 0.7 ms-1
What's going on?
What could affect temporal trends in estimated winds?
Ships getting largero Expect visual estimates to get smaller (observers are further
from the sea surface)o However visual estimates are getting largero And estimated winds are higher on bigger ships than on smaller
ships, the opposite of what we expect Are observers influenced by the presence of
anemometer onboard?o This would explain the trends seen: visual winds are getting
closer to the uncorrected anemometer winds over time Is there evidence for this?
o The VSOP-NA showed that visual winds at night on ships carrying anemometers were significantly higher than on those ships without anemometers
Annual mean day-night differences are larger for estimated than measured winds; differences decrease over time
What could affect temporal trends in anemometer winds?
Flow distortiono as ships increase in size, the geometry of the anemometer location
changes (see Moat et al. poster)o a change in fleet composition could lead to trends (see Thomas et
al. poster)o Thomas et al. (2005, CLIMAR Special Issue of IJC) found that 10m
ship anemometer winds were 6% higher than co-located 10 m buoy winds over the period 1980 - 1995.
Reduction in true wind calculation errorso Due to the introduction of automatic coding and logging softwareo Automated averaging of winds removes human tendency to report
gusts
Mixture of winds at observation height and 10mo Some versions of the TurboWin logging software apply wind
reduction to 10m, unfortunately we don't know which reports were corrected. More work is needed to identify them.
Conclusions
Adjustment of ICOADS wind speed to 10m reduces trends in the period 1980 to 2002
Metadata on both observation method and instrument height is vital to make the necessary corrections
But the visual winds show greater trends than either the anemometer winds or the Reanalyses
There is some evidence that observers making visual wind estimates are "influenced" by the (uncorrected for height) anemometer wind
Future work .......
Future work Extend analysis back in time to 1950
o Requires improved assignment of measurement method flag And forward in time
o Requires identification of winds already corrected to 10m by TurboWin coding software after 2001
Develop corrections to remove spurious trends in visual windso Time varying Beaufort Scale?o Identify individual ships which report anemometer winds as
visuals?o 'Calibrate' visual winds using daily pressure fields in well
sampled regions? (using dataset described by Kent and Berry poster)
Quantify the effects of flow distortion on anemometer windso Variations with ship typeo and ship size, geometry, wind direction ..... etc.
Produce corrected wind speed dataset from ICOADS
Other slides, if needed during questions
Wind Speed Indicator from ICOADS Wind speed is stored in tenths of ms-1. WI shows the method used and units in which wind speed was originally recorded
(0, 1, 3, 4 follow WMO code for Wind Indicator).
WI Description (method, units) Grouping for Analysis
0 Estimated, ms-1 VISUAL
1 Measured, ms-1 ANEMOMETER
2 Estimated, original units unknown VISUAL
3 Estimated, knot VISUAL
4 Measured, knot ANEMOMETER
5 Estimated, Beaufort force (conversion of original data, or based on documentation)
VISUAL
6 Estimated, original units unknown, or unknown method
not used in analysis
7 Measured, original units unknown ANEMOMETER
8 High resolution measurement (e.g., hundredths of ms-1)
ANEMOMETER
Frequency distribution of global wind speed (in m/s) for each ICOADS Wind Indicator,
for Jan1955
•in January 1955, most wind reports have an ambiguous wind indicator; they could be estimated or the method is unknown
•the second most frequent method indicator is for estimated winds, originally reported as Beaufort force; nearly all values are at midpoints of the Beaufort intervals
•measured winds show a more continuous distribution than estimated
Can we assume WI = 6 are all visual reports? The histograms show the distributions of wind speeds from 3
individual ships in the WI = 6 (visual OR unknown) category in January 1950.
One is clearly in Beaufort intervals and therefore visual, one is probably using an anemometer, the one on the right is unclear.
Conclusion: Exclude WI = 6 from analysis and start in 1980. In the future we must try and understand the winds with unknown
method.