A critical analysis of the wind climatology of the Adriatic Sea from different sources

We consider the wind climatology of the Adriatic Sea derived from three dif ferent sources: an operational meteorological model, a simplified wind mode l, and traditional ship reports. The simplified wind model is found to prov ide reliable results in storm conditions, but it partly smoothes the fields when the meteorological pattern is not well defined and fairly uniform at the basin scale. The ship reports show a strong evident bias towards low values. This is par tly interpreted as a tendency for ships to avoid rough weather and not to r eport in these types of conditions. A second reason is a bias present in th e transfer from the Beaufort to the metric scale. The best results are provided by the operational meteorological model, afte r its results have been corrected for a bias in wind speed, associated with the resolution of the model with respect to the dimensions of the basin un der study.