Evaluating QuikSCAT wind data to study wind induced coastal phenomena along the Galician Coast

Abstract

The wind regime is studied at the Western Galician coast (NW Iberian Peninsula) using a comparative analysis of two different wind datasets: QuikSCAT satellite and meteorological data collected at stations situated near the coast. The main interest of this research is to evaluate if the wind data from QuikSCAT can be used to study wind induced coastal phenomena. These datasets allow an adequate statistical assessment between QuikSCAT and meteorological wind data, which has been carried out by analyzing the correlation, mean error, root mean square errors, wind speed and directional bias. The results showed that the wind regime was similar for both datasets and presented the same pattern and similar speed during the whole periods. The wind direction was approximately the same, although some differences were observed in wind speed, with higher values at the points located offshore. Positive bias of the meteorological with respect to the satellite data was observed, indicating that meteorological data is anticlockwise rotated with respect to satellite data. Some errors due to wind direction arise, hence the relatively high RMSE values, which reach their highest in Peinador meteorological station. A seasonal behavior arose in wind speed ME and RMSE, with the highest values in winter. The results demonstrated that the study of wind induced phenomena near the coast, such as upwelling events, may be performed using QuikSCAT satellite data, which revealed to be an useful and reliable tool to obtain representative wind data near the coast.