Networking of European wind profilers (CWINDE)—Quality evaluation techniques

In late 1996, COST76 initiated a campaign to demonstrate the real-time networking capabilities of wind-profiler radar systems within Europe, CWINDE (Cost Wind Initiative Network Demonstration in Europe). A main objective of this campaign was to develop the necessary quality evaluation techniques to provide performance monitoring both in real time and in regular summaries of performance for system evaluation. This information would then be provided to system operators in an attempt to diagnose problems/faults as early as possible. Software has been developed to provide the following information:

(a) Real-time displays of wind measurements (updated hourly) (b) Plan view displays combining conventional radiosonde wind measurements with wind-profiler and aircraft data ( updated every 12 hours). (c) 2 day / 7 day component wind rms. variability plots (updated daily) (d) Monthly statistics of wind measurements versus NWP model background fields. All this information is available on-line via the CWINDE Web site.

This paper will provide an overview of the techniques developed to date, with some examples of the results obtained.