The assessment of ERA-interim wave data in the China Sea

As we know, wave significant height (H-s) and wave period, are critical for maritime commerce, infrastructure design, and hazard mitigation, etc. In this paper, we adopt wave data from eight stations in the data-sparse China Sea to assess the ERA-Interim (ERA-I). We have described the comparison with the short-scale and annual features between the datasets. The annual difference of Hs varies from -0.43 to 0.1 m with a mean value of -0.24 m for eight stations. In most of the stations, the ERA-I data of the locations except for the typhoon period has an overall overestimation, and the biases is positive. During the typhoon, due to the underestimation of the typhoon wind field, Hs in the ERA-I data is underestimated, which can be up to -50%. The physics research of typhoon is still poorly at present, causing the discrepancies between the datasets. Hence, we can't adopt the ERA-I Hs for design applications unless the validation has been tested by specific sites.