Figure 2a illustrates the spatial bias map obtained by time averaging the errors over the six-year daily mean retrospective SST forecasts taken from the CORA system. The climatological bias of the CORA SST with respect to the AVHRR-AMSR SST in the SCS is within the range of −3.02–1.04°C, with the mean basin-wide bias being −0.06°C (
Table 2); and the biases around 82% of the basin are within the intervals of ±0.50°C (see the black contours in
Fig. 2a), which is assumed to be the RMSE range of the satellite dataset according to previous studies in the East Asian marginal seas (0.5–0.7°C;
Sakaida et al., 2000;
Lee et al., 2005;
Qiu et al., 2009). The region of the climatological cold or warm bias of the CORA SST is roughly bounded by the 200-m isobath (
Fig. 1). In general, the cold bias is found along the coastal waters shallower than 200 m, while the warm bias is observed in the central SCS. Such spatial distribution characteristics of climatological bias in the CORA SST may be due to the following two facts. First, the AVHRR SST is cold with respect to the AVHRR-AMSR SST in the global ocean (
Balmaseda et al., 2013), and the same is true in the SCS (
Figs 3a and
b). There is a cold bias of the high-resolution (1/4)° OISST product relative to the low-resolution (1°) product (
Balmaseda et al., 2013). As noted by
Qiu et al. (2009), the AVHRR SST has been validated to show a regional bias of about −0.4°C compared with independent
in-situ SST observations from the drifting buoys in a two-year period from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2005 in the northern SCS, which is confirmed by highly accurate
in-situ SSTs from research vessels. Second, the initial fields of the CORA forecasts are formed by assimilating the (1/4)°-resolution AVHRR SST, the AVISO altimetry SSHA measurements in waters deeper than 200 m and
in-situ temperature/salinity profiles (
Han et al., 2013). Under such circumstances, the cold bias in the initial SST field in the central SCS (not the coastal regions) caused by assimilating the AVHRR SST could be compensated by assimilating the altimetry SSHA and
in-situ temperature/salinity profiles (
Figs 2a and
3a); and this leads to an initialization of SST in the right direction to give improved SST forecasts. However, the cold biases in the coastal waters shallower than 200 m remain. This statement can be confirmed by comparing the CORA SST with the EN4 data shown in
Fig. 2c. The scatter plot in
Fig. 2c displays monthly mean SST from the CORA data versus that from satellite (blue triangles) and EN4 (green plus signs) data. Although the EN4 data have an uneven temporal and spatial distribution (not shown), an agreement between the CORA and EN4 SSTs exists, and the mean basin-wide bias is −0.02°C.
Figure 2c clearly shows that the majority of the blue triangles fall below the 45-degree reference line, which further stresses the fact that generally speaking the CORA SST is lower than the AVHRR-AMSR SST in the SCS. Nevertheless, the gridded AVHRR-AMSR SST dataset, thanks to its availability, is used as the baseline for correcting the CORA SST bias to demonstrate performances of both BPNN and EOF-BPNN methods. After applying the bias correction, consistency between the CORA and AVHRR-AMSR SSTs is achieved, as shown by the blue triangles in
Fig. 2f. In contrast, the basin-wide deviation (mean bias) between the CORA and EN4 SSTs has increased from −0.02°C to −0.19°C. It therefore reminds us that the quality of the satellite SST in the SCS could be improved by applying the regional algorithm, as suggested by
Qiu et al. (2009).