Abstract:

We evaluated the 10-m wind speed, wind direction, and 2-m temperature of the Prydz Bay region (Antarctica)
using five reanalysis products: the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim
Reanalysis, Japanese 25-year Reanalysis, Japanese 55-year Reanalysis, Climate Forecast System Reanalysis,
and Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Application. The reanalysis products were compared
with observations acquired by two manual weather stations and three automatic weather stations during 2007.
Examination of the monthly mean and seasonal differences revealed that reanalysis wind speeds
were lower than station observations at Mawson but higher at the other stations. Discrepancies in wind direction
between the observations and the reanalysis datasets were small. The 2-m temperatures of the reanalysis
datasets were lower than observed at the manual weather stations. There was no consistent characteristic
in the differences between the 2-m temperatures from the reanalysis datasets and the data from the
automatic weather stations. We also evaluated 6-hourly data at Mawson. It was found that the reanalysis
datasets overestimated wind speed at low wind speeds (<5 m/s) and underestimated wind speed at high wind
speeds (>15 m/s). In addition, the number of strong wind events observed at Mawson was significantly
higher than indicated by the reanalysis datasets.

Key words: Antarctic station data, reanalysis datasets, wind speed, wind direction, temperature