The 11th Conference on Applied Climatology

P1.10
FEASIBILITY OF GENERATING 24-HOUR MEAN VECTOR WIND STATISTICS FROM EVERY-THIRD HOUR CROSS-TABULATED WIND DIRECTION/SPEED DATA - A SINGLE STATION EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS

Charles J. Fisk, U.S. Navy, Point Mugu, CA

The purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility of generating accurate mean vector wind statistics for every hour of the day from an hourly subset of cross-tabulated direction and speed data, using a 20-year test data set of hourly wind observations from the
Pt. Mugu, CA weather station. Twenty-year climatological mean vector
wind statistics will be generated for every hour of the day and month
(36-point, nearest knot observations) for the period 1973-1992, and these figures will be compared with results produced from a "synthetic" every-third-hour 16-point-Compass/Beaufort Scale scheme using the same original data. Estimated mean vector wind statistics for the "every-third-hour" selection (0100LST, 0400LST,...,2200LST) are derived from joint mid-value category magnitudes applied to the original observations, those for the "off-hours" from cubic-spline interpolation using the every-third-hour estimates of the u and v-components. Results are interpreted statistically and graphically, the latter employing 1) diurnal hodographs for selected calendar months and 2) a chart that plots mean vector wind arrows for every hour and calendar month on a single chart, overlain by constancy contours. This approach, if considered applicable on a wider basis, opens up the possibility for the quick, efficient, and accurate creation of station-by-station products of these kind from ISMCS-like data sets.

The 11th Conference on Applied Climatology