Extension of spherical nonparametric estimators to nonisotropic kernels: An oceanographic application

In a recently published paper. spherical nonparametric estimators were appl ied to feature-track ensembles to determine a range of statistics for the a tmospheric features considered. This approach obviates the types of bias no rmally introduced with traditional estimators. New spherical isotropic kern els with local support were introduced. Ln this paper the extension to sphe rical nonisotropic kernels with local support is introduced, together with a means of obtaining the shape and smoothing parameters in an objective way . The usefulness of spherical nonparametric estimators based on nonisotropi c kernels is demonstrated with an application to an oceanographic feature-t rack ensemble.