Comparison of Dropsonde and ERA5 Reanalysis Data during Typhoons
HUANG Yu
SUN Zhoujun
LIN Jiang
DONG Shaorou
Abstract：To evaluate the applicability of ERA5 reanalysis data in typhoon weather systems,high-al-titude observational data from dropsonde observations conducted by the Hong Kong Observatory and the Gov-ernment Flying Service during Typhoons"Prapiroon"and"Yagi"were used to systematically assess the ca-pability of ERA5 in characterizing the vertical structures of temperature,relative humidity,and wind fields within different wind circle regions of the typhoons(outside the 7-level wind circle,inside the 7-level but outside the 10-level wind circle,and inside the 10-level wind circle).The results indicate the following.(1)Under all experimental groups,the vertical temperature structure distributions of ERA5 and dropsonde data were nearly identical,increasing with decreasing height;the root mean square error of temperature was controlled within 1℃.(2)ERA5 exhibited weak capability in characterizing both the vertical structure and magnitude of relative humidity,with correlation coefficients between the two showing weak positive or even negative correlations across all experimental groups.(3)ERA5's representation of wind direction in the troposphere was largely consistent with the dropsonde data,and it demonstrated a certain capability in char-acterizing the vertical distribution of wind speed.The correlation coefficients between the two ranged from 0.4 to 0.9 across all experiments,with root mean square errors for wind speeds below30 m·s-1 controlled at around 2 m·s-1.However,for wind speeds exceeding 40 m·s-1,ERA5 tended to exhibit a bias toward lower wind speeds.
Keywords：climatologytyphoondropsondeERA5 reanalysis data
Publication Date：2025-10-20
Online Publishing Date：2025-10-30(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：5( 54-58 )