BiasSstLonRmse

eq_SST_bias: zonal structure of time-mean SST in the equatorial Pacific

Description:

Computes the zonal root mean square error (RMSE) of equatorial Pacific (150°E-90°W) climatological (time and meridional 5°S-5°N average) sea surface temperature (SST) between model and observations

Reference observations:

TropFlux 1979-2018 (main)

20CRv2 1871-2012, ERA-Interim 1979-2018, ERSSTv5 1854-2018, HadISST 1870-2018, NCEP2 1979-2018

Region:

equatorial Pacific

Regridding:

model and observations regridded toward a generic 1°x1° grid (using cdms esmf linear method)

Steps (computation):

detrending (if applicable)
temporal average
regridding (if applicable)
meridional average
RMSE computation

Time frequency:

monthly

Units:

°C

Variable name:

sea surface temperature (SST)

Dive down Level 1:

The first level shows the diagnostic used to compute the metric and highlight the main differences between the model and the reference. Figure 1: bias in the zonal structure of sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial Pacific (5°S-5°N averaged), showing mainly the cold tongue bias (usually too warm off South America and too cold further west). The black and blue curves show respectively the reference and the model. The metric derived is the zonal RMSE between the model curve and the reference curve.

Dive down Level 2:

The second level shows the broader picture to better understand the spatial pattern of the bias: the map of the time-mean in the equatorial Pacific. Figure 2: bias of time-mean sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial Pacific, showing mainly the cold tongue bias (too warm off South America and too cold further west). The left and right maps show respectively the reference and the model.