Wind gusts in the atmospheric boundary layer

Wind gusts, which are short duration (typically 3 s) wind speed maxima, are representative of the extreme wind conditions. They are very important for human activity, because the strongest gusts associated with storms are the most significant single cause of natural hazards. The impact of wind gusts on different structures depends on the characteristics of each structure. For example for wind energy, it is important to know both the probability of extreme maximum gusts in time scales of decades for the design of power plants and in the shorter term to support wind turbine operations. For wind gust forecasting it is essential to have reliable wind gust observations. Traditionally, observations have only been available from weather stations here the wind is usually measured at a reference height of 10 m. For wind energy, information is needed at greater heights, as the hub heights of the largest turbines extend even above 150 m. The main aim of this work has been to investigate wind gusts across the entire atmospheric boundary layer based on observations from tall meteorological masts as well as applying new measurement methods developed in this dissertation. The novel methods are based on turbulence measurements taken onboard a research aircraft and by a Doppler lidar. The research aircraft can fly long distances in a short time, so the measured wind speeds do not represent wind speed variation in time but they are a function of flight distance. The new method developed in this dissertation to compare temporal and spatial scales allows the measurement of wind gusts from a research aircraft. Then, observations can be obtained from places where traditional weather stations or meteorological masts cannot be deployed. Applying the new method, the observed wind gusts from the marine Arctic matched well with those observed at a meteorological mast in the Baltic Sea, although also differences were observed between these environments. Doppler lidar provides radial wind speed measurements along a laser beam transmitted by the instrument. When data from at least three lines of sight are combined, the three-dimensional wind vector can be derived. However, the measurements from multiple lines of sight take several seconds, and the different beams represent different measurement volumes. For these reasons, the measured wind speed maxima from the Doppler lidar used in this work were higher than the corresponding wind gusts from the nearby meteorological mast. In this dissertation, we developed a new theoretical method that significantly reduced this positive bias. Wind gust measurements are usually prone to measurement errors, called outliers. The use of a spike removal algorithm typically applied in traditional turbulence measurements, resulted in significantly improved Doppler lidar data quality. The method performed even better than the traditional data quality assurance methods based on carrier-to-noise ratio, by removing the unrealistic outliers present in the time series. Based on the above wind gust measurements, it was found that in the lowest part of the atmospheric boundary layer the ratio of the wind gust speed and the mean wind speed, called the gust factor, decreases strongly with measurement height. The higher the aerodynamic roughness of the surface, the greater is the change. Moreover, the static stability of the atmosphere affects the gust factor: the decrease of the gust factor with height is clearly smaller in unstable than in stable conditions. The gust parameterizations used in numerical weather rediction models were originally designed for the reference measurement height of 10 m. A new parameterization was developed that takes into account not only the effects of surface roughness and atmospheric stability but also the height above the surface. Based on meteorological mast and research aircraft measurements, the new parametrization yielded better results than previous methods

Methodology for obtaining wind gusts using Doppler lidar

A new methodology is proposed for scaling Doppler lidar observations of wind gusts to make them comparable with those observed at a meteorological mast. Doppler lidars can then be used to measure wind gusts in regions and heights where traditional meteorological mast measurements are not available. This novel method also provides estimates for wind gusts at arbitrary gust durations, including those shorter than the temporal resolution of the Doppler lidar measurements. The input parameters for the scaling method are the measured wind-gust speed as well as the mean and standard deviation of the horizontal wind speed. The method was tested using WindCube V2 Doppler lidar measurements taken next to a 100 m high meteorological mast. It is shown that the method can provide realistic Doppler lidar estimates of the gust factor, i.e. the ratio of the wind-gust speed to the mean wind speed. The method reduced the bias in the Doppler lidar gust factors from 0.07 to 0.03 and can be improved further to reduce the bias by using a realistic estimate of turbulence. Wind gust measurements are often prone to outliers in the time series, because they represent the maximum of a (moving-averaged) horizontal wind speed. To assure the data quality in this study, we applied a filtering technique based on spike detection to remove possible outliers in the Doppler lidar data. We found that the spike detection-removal method clearly improved the wind-gust measurements, both with and without the scaling method. Spike detection also outperformed the traditional Doppler lidar quality assurance method based on carrier-to-noise ratio, by removing additional unrealistic outliers present in the time serie

Case studies of the wind field around Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, using unmanned aircraft

The wind field in Arctic fjords is strongly influenced by glaciers, local orography and the interaction between sea and land. Ny-Ålesund, an important location for atmospheric research in the Arctic, is located in Kongsfjorden, a fjord with a complex local wind field that influences measurements in Ny-Ålesund. Using wind measurements from UAS (unmanned aircraft systems), ground measurements, radiosonde and reanalysis data, characteristic processes that determine the wind field around Ny-Ålesund are identified and analysed. UAS measurements and ground measurements show, as did previous studies, a south-east flow along Kongsfjorden, dominating the wind conditions in Ny-Ålesund. The wind measured by the UAS in a valley 1 km west of Ny-Ålesund differs from the wind measured at the ground in Ny-Ålesund. In this valley, we identify a small-scale catabatic flow from the south to south-west as the cause for this difference. Case studies show a backing (counterclockwise rotation with increasing altitude) of the wind direction close to the ground. A katabatic flow is measured near the ground, with a horizontal wind speed up to 5 m s-1. Both the larger-scale south-east flow along the fjord and the local katabatic flows lead to a highly variable wind field, so ground measurements and weather models alone give an incomplete picture. The comparison of UAS measurements, ground measurements and weather conditions analysis using a synoptic model is used to show that the effects measured in the case studies play a role in the Ny-Ålesund wind field in spring

Wind Gust Measurement Techniques—From Traditional Anemometry to New Possibilities

Information on wind gusts is needed for assessment of wind-induced damage and risks to safety. The measurement of wind gust speed requires a high temporal resolution of the anemometer system, because the gust is defined as a short-duration (seconds) maximum of the fluctuating wind speed. Until the digitalization of wind measurements in the 1990s, the wind gust measurements suffered from limited recording and data processing resources. Therefore, the majority of continuous wind gust records date back at most only by 30 years. Although the response characteristics of anemometer systems are good enough today, the traditional measurement techniques at weather stations based on cup and sonic anemometers are limited to heights and regions where the supporting structures can reach. Therefore, existing measurements are mainly concentrated over densely-populated land areas, whereas from remote locations, such as the marine Arctic, wind gust information is available only from sparse coastal locations. Recent developments of wind gust measurement techniques based on turbulence measurements from research aircraft and from Doppler lidar can potentially provide new information from heights and locations unreachable by traditional measurement techniques. Moreover, fast-developing measurement methods based on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) may add to better coverage of wind gust measurements in the future. In this paper, we provide an overview of the history and the current status of anemometry from the perspective of wind gusts. Furthermore, a discussion on the potential future directions of wind gust measurement techniques is provided