Comparison of Boundary Layer Winds from NWS LFM (National Weather Service's Limited-Area Fine-Mesh) Output and Instrumented Buoys

摘要

Measurements of the surface wind by 15 instrumented buoys are compared with boundary layer winds predicted by the National Weather Service's (NWS) Limited-area Fine-mesh Model (LFM). The buoy observations at 0600 GMT and 1800 GMT are selected and compared directly to the 6-hour LFM predictions for the nearest grid point; the predictions are made twice-daily and are valid for those times. The LFM 12-hourly distributions are skewed toward higher speeds relative to the observations, but the direction distributions show very good agreement, suggesting the usefulness of the LFM data base to construct climatologies.