Assessing ERA5 Wind Speed and Wave Height Errors in the Bohai and Yellow Seas: Spatiotemporal Patterns and Wind–Wave Error Association

This study evaluates the accuracy of ERA5 10-m wind speed and significant wave height (SWH) using one-year hourly observations from 16 buoys in the Bohai and Yellow Seas. ERA5 agrees closely with the buoys (wind: Bias 0.04 m/s, root-mean-square error (RMSE) 1.40 m/s, scatter index (SI) 0.24, correlation coefficient (r) 0.90; SWH: Bias 0.11 m, RMSE 0.23 m, SI 0.30, r 0.94). Errors decrease offshore, and the control is offshore distance rather than water depth: a 2.5-fold depth change at fixed distance alters wind RMSE by 0.02 m/s, whereas a doubling of distance at fixed depth alters it by 0.22–0.24 m/s. Wind Bias has a marked diurnal cycle whose amplitude decreases offshore and reverses seasonally; SWH Bias stays positive but weakens in summer; both variables overestimate weak and underestimate strong conditions. The absolute errors of the two variables vary out of phase, so their correlation cancels (−0.40 to 0.02), whereas the relative errors remain strongly coupled (0.59–0.80). Above 13 m/s, ERA5 underestimates wind by 11% while overestimating SWH by 6%, an inconsistency that locates the high-sea-state error in the wave model rather than in the forcing. These quantified errors constrain design-wave estimation and Bias correction in coastal engineering.