Using multifractals to evaluate oceanographic model skill

Abstract

We are in an era of unprecedented data volumes generated from observations and model simulations. This is particularly true from satellite Earth Observations (EO) and global scale oceanographic models. This presents us with an opportunity to evaluate large-scale oceanographic model outputs using EO data. Previous work on model skill evaluation has led to a plethora of metrics. The paper defines two new model skill evaluation metrics. The metrics are based on the theory of universal multifractals and their purpose is to measure the structural similarity between the model predictions and the EO data. The two metrics have the following advantages over the standard techniques: (a) they are scale-free and (b) they carry important part of information about how model represents different oceanographic drivers. Those two metrics are then used in the paper to evaluate the performance of the FVCOM model in the shelf seas around the south-west coast of the UK.