Intercomparison of Wave Reanalysis based on ERA5 and WW3 Databases

Abstract

In this work an intercomparison of two wave reanalysis products, namely ERA5 and CFSR-W (WW3 hereafter), is presented. The datasets are assessed by means of several statistical features, such as seasonal variability, quantiles of the probability distribution, annual and inter-annual variability, and several error metrics. Both datasets cover a period of 31 years (1979-2009), a fact that assures that most of the long-scale features are equally present in both datasets. The analysis performed is depicted both on a global and regional basis. The results are also assessed on the basis of a global satellite altimeter dataset.