The shape of the photon transfer curve of CCD sensors

The photon transfer curve (PTC) of a CCD depicts the variance of uniform images as a function of their average. It is now well established that the variance is not proportional to the average, as Poisson statistics would indicate, but rather flattens out at high flux. This “variance deficit”, related to the brighter-fatter effect, feeds correlations between nearby pixels that increase with flux, and decay with distance. We propose an analytical expression for the PTC shape, and for the dependence of correlations with intensity, and relate both to some more basic quantities related to the electrostatics of the sensor, which are commonly used to correct science images for the brighter-fatter effect. We derive electrostatic constraints from a large set of flat field images acquired with a CCD e2v 250, and eventually question the generally-admitted assumption that boundaries of CCD pixels shift by amounts proportional to the source charges. Our results show that the departure of flat field statistics from the Poisson law is entirely compatible with charge redistribution during the drift in the sensor.

Comparison of Postprocessing Methods for the Calibration of 100-m Wind Ensemble Forecasts at Off- and Onshore Sites

Ensemble forecasts are a valuable addition to deterministic wind forecasts since they allow the quantification of forecast uncertainties. To remove common deficiencies of ensemble forecasts such as biases and ensemble spread deficits, various postprocessing methods for the calibration of wind speed (univariate calibration) and wind vector (bivariate calibration) ensemble forecasts have been developed in recent years. The objective of this paper is to compare the performance of state-of-the-art calibration methods at distinct off- and onshore sites in central Europe. The aim is to identify calibration- and site-dependent improvements in forecast skill over uncalibrated 100-m ensemble forecasts from the ECMWF Ensemble Prediction System. The ensemble forecasts were evaluated at four onshore and three offshore measurement towers in central Europe at 100-m height for lead times up to 5 days. The results show that the recursive and adaptive wind vector calibration (AUV) outperforms calibration methods such as univariate ensemble model output statistics (EMOS), bivariate EMOS, variance deficit calibration, and ensemble copula coupling in terms of the root-mean-square error and continuous ranked probability score at almost all sites. It was found that exponential downweighting of past measurements in AUV contributes to higher forecast skill since similar downweighting approaches in the other calibration methods improved forecast skill. Proposing a bidimensional bias correction in bivariate EMOS similar to the approach taken in AUV yields bivariate EMOS skill at onshore sites that is similar to AUV skill. Deterministic and probabilistic improvements are usually much lower at offshore sites and increase with increasing complexity of the site characteristics since systematic forecast errors and ensemble underdispersion are larger at high-roughness sites.