The Sailor diagram – A new diagram for the verification of two-dimensional vector data from multiple models
Author/s
Sáenz, Jon; Carreno-Madinabeitia, Sheila; Esnaola, Ganix; González-Rojí, Santos J.; Ibarra-Berastegi, Gabriel; [et al.]Date
2020-07Keywords
The Sailor diagram
Abstract
A new diagram is proposed for the verification of vector quantities generated by multiple models against a set of observations. It has been designed with the objective, as in the Taylor diagram, of providing a visual diagnostic tool which allows an easy comparison of simulations by multiple models against a reference dataset. However, the Sailor diagram extends this ability to two-dimensional quantities such as currents, wind, horizontal fluxes of water vapour and other geophysical variables by adding features which allow us to evaluate directional properties of the data as well. The diagram is based on the analysis of the two-dimensional structure of the mean squared error matrix between model and observations. This matrix is separated in a part corresponding to the bias and the relative rotation of the two orthogonal directions (empirical orthogonal functions; EOFs) which best describe the vector data. Since there is no truncation of the retained EOFs, these orthogonal directions explain ...
Type
article