The modelling and prediction of marine disasters, due either to natural events (e.g. severe storms) or human-induced occurrences (e.g. oil spills), require an accurate prediction of ocean currents and sea-state, which in turn requires surface wind predictions. The primary purpose of this study is to obtain reliable estimates of surface winds in the Australian coastal region from currently available operational forecast systems, in this case the Bureau of Meteorology of Australia's Limited Area Prediction System (LAPS). The study involves an intercomparison of the operationally derived surface winds and observed surface winds obtained both from automatic weather stations and ERS2 altimeter data. Although overall the correlations between the operationally derived and the observed surface winds were satisfactory, some potentially significant discrepancies were found. These discrepancies varied quite markedly by region, and were most noticeable for the open ocean sites. While the correlations for time-scales greater than three days were reasonable, there was less agreement for the one to three-day time-scales.
Tang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.