HYCOM vs RAMA Sea Surface Temperature (SST)

Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (RAMA) is an array of buoys for a comprehensive, long-term and real-time measurements in the Indian Ocean suitable for climate research and forecasting. These buoys measure SST using Thermistor (Sea Bird Electronics: SBE16, SBE37) with resolution of 0.001$^{\circ}C$ having range of 1-31$^{\circ}C$ and accuracy of $\pm$ 0.003$^{\circ}C$.

Here we make use of the SST from RAMA moored buoys to validate the SSTs simulated by HYCOM model with 1/4 and 1/12 degree resolution after interpolating the model SST to the time and location of these buoys. In order to assess the realism of the simulation of different oceanic parameters, below described statistical parameters viz. Mean Error (ME), Root Mean Square Difference (RMSD) Correlation (CORR) and non dimensional Skill Score (SS) following Kara et. al 2008.

$$ME= {\overline{X}}-{\overline{Y}}$$ (1)

$$RMSD = \left[{1\over{n}} {\sum\limits^{N}_{i=1}} (Y_i - X_i)^2 \right] ^{1\over{2}}$$ (2)

$$CORR = {\sum\limits^{N}_{i=1}} {(X_i - \overline{X}) (Y_i-\overline{Y})/\sigma X \sigma Y}$$ (3)

$$\hspace{-1cm} SS= R^{2}-\underbrace{\left[R-(\sigma_Y/\sigma_X)\right]^{2}}-\underbrace{\left[R-(\overline{Y}-\overline{X})/\sigma_X\right]^{2}}$$ (4)