Climatological Assessment of Meteorological Parameters

NOAA's Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, within the National Ocean Service, operates and maintains the National Water Level Network (NLWON), a network of 210 long-term tide station located along the coastal United States, including the Great Lakes. Additionally, meteorological data is collected at various stations within the NWLON network. This project assessed and analyzed meteorological collected at NWLON stations data to determine seasonal variability and climatological trends.

To assess the trends and any regional correlation to meteorological behavior, five stations were used from each coastal region of the contiguous United States. These stations were: Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, VA; Duck, NC; Naples, FL; San Francisco, CA; and Seattle, WA. For each station, the meteorological parameters evaluated were water temperature and air temperature using observations going back over 15 years. Data were quality controlled and analyzed statistically by an in-house program, used by CO-OPS, called first Reduction. The data were de-trended to remove the seasonal cycle, in order for the variability in the dataset to become more apparent. The air and water temperature at each station were compared to determine if there was a correlation between the parameters. Seasonal cycles were clearly visible for each station, and were geographically correlated. However, the residual trends were too small and the data too noisy to represent relevant climatological trends. Many of the more anomalous signals in the residuals for each station correspond to extreme weather events reported.

The analysis determined that the data collected at the CO-OPS water level stations are good quality and have the potential to be used for other research and investigations However, longer time series should be used for future analysis to obtain a better representation of climatological trends in the data. As expected, the analysis showed a lag between the annual signals for air temperatures and water temperatures in every station. Moreover, the behavior of the meteorological data is indeed correlated to the geographical location of the water level station.