Open AccessA Downscaled Wind Climatology on the Outer Continental Shelf
Author(s) -
Bryan Woods,
T. Nehrkorn,
John M. Henderson
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of applied meteorology and climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.079
H-Index - 134
eISSN - 1558-8432
pISSN - 1558-8424
DOI - 10.1175/jamc-d-12-0216.1
Subject(s) - meteorology , series (stratigraphy) , buoy , submarine pipeline , climatology , environmental science , temporal resolution , continental shelf , numerical weather prediction , offshore wind power , boundary layer , wind speed , geology , mechanics , oceanography , geography , turbine , aerospace engineering , physics , paleontology , quantum mechanics , engineering
A 31-yr time series of boundary layer winds has been developed for a region on the outer continental shelf. This simulated time series was designed to be suitable to study the wind resources for a potential offshore wind farm. Reanalysis data were used to initialize a series of high-resolution numerical simulations. The limited number of high-resolution numerical simulations was repeatedly sampled using an analog matching criterion that is based on the reanalysis data to create a 31-yr time series with 500-m spatial resolution and 10-min temporal resolution. Validation against buoy data indicates that combining the reanalysis and resampled high-resolution numerical simulations produces a much more accurate wind speed distribution than does the reanalysis alone. Both the model physics and downscaled resolution may be contributing to the observed performance gains.