Overview

This collection provides spatiotemporally paired reanalysis and satellite data to supplement the lidar buoy observations during the California deployments. Point time series of observed and reanalysis data are provided, using inverse distance weighting to geolocate the reanalysis data to the buoy location. Gridded time series of reanalysis data are provided, covering the California coast and extending into the Pacific Ocean. Satellite data in the coastal California region are also provided.

The reanalysis collection includes the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2), the Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2), the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis version 5 (ERA5), and the analysis system of the Rapid Refresh (RAP). The satellite data collection is that of Ribal and Young (2019). All datasets are publicly available with the sources provided in the References section.

Data Quality

The observations provided are the processed versions buoy/buoy.z06.a0 and buoy/lidar.z06.a0. In December 2020, the developers of MERRA-2 and ERA5 reported issues with some months covering the buoy deployment period related to warm sea surface temperature biases and assimilation of anomalous snow depth observations, respectively. This collection includes only the reprocessed versions of MERRA-2 and ERA5 that have addressed the issues.