SYNOPTIC WEATHER-MAP CLASSIFICATION: CORRELATION VERSUS SUMS-OF-SQUARES* |
| |
| Authors: | Cort J Willmott |
| |
| Institution: | CORT I. WILLMO'TT is Associate Professor of Geography and Marine Studies at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 He is also a member of the University's Center for Climatic Research and Chair of the AAC Climate Specialty Croup. His research interests include the relationships between land-surface processes and cdirnate, the statistical analysis oi large-scale climate fields and the evaluation of model performance. |
| |
| Abstract: | A sums-of-squares similarity measure (S), attributed to Kirchhofer, has been characterized by a number of synoptic climatologists as superior to correlation for quantifying the similarity between two gridded weather maps. The sums-of-squares metric and product-moment correlation, however, are virtually identical so S cannot be regarded as better. It is also suggested that correlation, in any form, is not generally a satisfactory measure of the similarity between weather maps of comparable units. |
| |
| Keywords: | synoptic climatology classification correlation |
|
|
