scholarly journals Sea Surface Roughness and Drag Coefficient as Functions of Neutral Wind Speed

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Hersbach

Abstract Near the surface, it is commonly believed that the behavior of the (turbulent) atmospheric flow can be well described by a constant stress layer. In the case of a neutrally stratified surface layer, this leads to the well-known logarithmic wind profile that determines the relation between near-surface wind speed and magnitude of stress. The profile is set by a surface roughness length, which, over the ocean surface, is not constant; rather, it depends on the underlying (ocean wave) sea state. For instance, at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts this relation is parameterized in terms of surface stress itself, where the scale is set by kinematic viscosity for light wind and a Charnock parameter for strong wind. For given wind speed at a given height, the determination of the relation between surface wind and stress (expressed by a drag coefficient) leads to an implicit equation that is to be solved in an iterative way. In this paper a fit is presented that directly expresses the neutral drag coefficient and surface roughness in terms of wind speed without the need for iteration. Since the fit is formulated in purely dimensionless quantities, it is able to produce accurate results over the entire range in wind speed, level height, and values for the Charnock parameter for which the implicit set of equations is believed to be valid.

2007 ◽  
Vol 135 (9) ◽  
pp. 3070-3085 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric W. Uhlhorn ◽  
Peter G. Black ◽  
James L. Franklin ◽  
Mark Goodberlet ◽  
James Carswell ◽  
...  

Abstract For the first time, the NOAA/Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) flew stepped frequency microwave radiometers (SFMRs) on both WP-3D research aircraft for operational hurricane surface wind speed measurement in 2005. An unprecedented number of major hurricanes provided ample data to evaluate both instrument performance and surface wind speed retrieval quality up to 70 m s−1 (Saffir–Simpson category 5). To this end, a new microwave emissivity–wind speed model function based on estimates of near-surface winds in hurricanes by global positioning system (GPS) dropwindsondes is proposed. For practical purposes, utilizing this function removes a previously documented high bias in moderate SFMR-measured wind speeds (10–50 m s−1), and additionally corrects an extreme wind speed (>60 m s−1) underestimate. The AOC operational SFMRs yield retrievals that are precise to within ∼2% at 30 m s−1, which is a factor of 2 improvement over the NOAA Hurricane Research Division’s SFMR, and comparable to the precision found here for GPS dropwindsonde near-surface wind speeds. A small (1.6 m s−1), but statistically significant, overall high bias was found for independent SFMR measurements utilizing emissivity data not used for model function development. Across the range of measured wind speeds (10–70 m s−1), SFMR 10-s averaged wind speeds are within 4 m s−1 (rms) of the dropwindsonde near-surface estimate, or 5%–25% depending on speed. However, an analysis of eyewall peak wind speeds indicates an overall 2.6 m s−1 GPS low bias relative to the peak SFMR estimate on the same flight leg, suggesting a real increase in the maximum wind speed estimate due to SFMR’s high-density sampling. Through a series of statistical tests, the SFMR is shown to reduce the overall bias in the peak surface wind speed estimate by ∼50% over the current flight-level wind reduction method and is comparable at extreme wind speeds. The updated model function is demonstrated to behave differently below and above the hurricane wind speed threshold (∼32 m s−1), which may have implications for air–sea momentum and kinetic energy exchange. The change in behavior is at least qualitatively consistent with recent laboratory and field results concerning the drag coefficient in high wind speed conditions, which show a fairly clear “leveling off” of the drag coefficient with increased wind speed above ∼30 m s−1. Finally, a composite analysis of historical data indicates that the earth-relative SFMR peak wind speed is typically located in the hurricane’s right-front quadrant, which is consistent with previous observational and theoretical studies of surface wind structure.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xia Li ◽  
Yongjie Pan ◽  
Yingsha Jiang

Abstract Near-surface wind speed is of great significance in many aspects of the human production and living. This study analyses the spatiotemporal characteristics of the near-surface wind speed and wind speed percentiles with meteorological station observations in China from 1979 to 2019. Furthermore, the mechanisms of the wind speed variations are also investigated with ERA-Interim reanalysis dataset. Spatially, the wind speeds in the northern and eastern regions of China are larger than that in the central and southern regions. Seasonally, the wind speed in spring is significantly larger than that in the other seasons. The dispersion degree of wind speed in spring is larger than that in the other seasons both spatially and temporally. The near-surface wind speed in China shows significantly decreasing trends during 1979–2019, particularly in 1979–1999, but the wind speed trend reversed after 2000. After dividing the wind speed into different percentiles, it recognizes that the decreasing trend of stronger winds are more significant than that of weaker winds. The weaker the wind speed, the more significant increasing trend after 2000. Therefore, the decreasing wind speed trend before 2000 is mainly caused by the significant reduction of strong wind, while the reversal trend after 2000 results from the increase of weak wind. The variations of the wind speed over China attributed to both the U and V wind components, and the variations of zonal wind is closely related to the weakened upper westerly wind field and the uneven warming between high and low latitudes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenrui Jiang ◽  
Liguang Wu ◽  
Qingyuan Liu

The numerical simulation of tropical cyclones has been increasingly conducted using the advanced Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model with the large-eddy simulation (LES) technique. Given the importance of the boundary wind profile for the vertical exchange of horizontal momentum between the atmosphere and the ocean, the drag coefficient was evaluated in the numerical simulation with the WRF-LES framework at the finest horizontal grid spacing of 37 m. In the absence of the TC–ocean interaction, the drag coefficient derived from the simulated wind profile does not show the leveling off or decrease in the strong wind conditions. The drag coefficient increases with the increasing near-surface wind speed and agrees well with the extrapolation of the Large and Pond formula in the strong wind conditions. It is suggested that the boundary wind structure simulated with the LES technique may be unrealistic when the TC–ocean interaction is not fully considered.


2014 ◽  
Vol 599-601 ◽  
pp. 1605-1609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Zeng ◽  
Zhan Xie Wu ◽  
Qing Hao Meng ◽  
Jing Hai Li ◽  
Shu Gen Ma

The wind is the main factor to influence the propagation of gas in the atmosphere. Therefore, the wind signal obtained by anemometer will provide us valuable clues for searching gas leakage sources. In this paper, the Recurrence Plot (RP) and Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) are applied to analyze the influence of recurrence characteristics of the wind speed time series under the condition of the same place, the same time period and with the sampling frequency of 1hz, 2hz, 4.2hz, 5hz, 8.3hz, 12.5hz and 16.7hz respectively. Research results show that when the sampling frequency is higher than 5hz, the trends of recurrence nature of different groups are basically unchanged. However, when the sampling frequency is set below 5hz, the original trend of recurrence nature is destroyed, because the recurrence characteristic curves obtained using different sampling frequencies appear cross or overlapping phenomena. The above results indicate that the anemometer will not be able to fully capture the detailed information in wind field when its sampling frequency is lower than 5hz. The recurrence characteristics analysis of the wind speed signals provides an important basis for the optimal selection of anemometer.


Urban Climate ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 100703
Author(s):  
Yonghong Liu ◽  
Yongming Xu ◽  
Fangmin Zhang ◽  
Wenjun Shu

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 738 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenqing Xu ◽  
Like Ning ◽  
Yong Luo

With the large-scale development of wind energy, wind power forecasting plays a key role in power dispatching in the electric power grid, as well as in the operation and maintenance of wind farms. The most important technology for wind power forecasting is forecasting wind speed. The current mainstream methods for wind speed forecasting involve the combination of mesoscale numerical meteorological models with a post-processing system. Our work uses the WRF model to obtain the numerical weather forecast and the gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) algorithm to improve the near-surface wind speed post-processing results of the numerical weather model. We calculate the feature importance of GBDT in order to find out which feature most affects the post-processing wind speed results. The results show that, after using about 300 features at different height and pressure layers, the GBDT algorithm can output more accurate wind speed forecasts than the original WRF results and other post-processing models like decision tree regression (DTR) and multi-layer perceptron regression (MLPR). Using GBDT, the root mean square error (RMSE) of wind speed can be reduced from 2.7–3.5 m/s in the original WRF result by 1–1.5 m/s, which is better than DTR and MLPR. While the index of agreement (IA) can be improved by 0.10–0.20, correlation coefficient be improved by 0.10–0.18, Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NSE) be improved by −0.06–0.6. It also can be found that the feature which most affects the GBDT results is the near-surface wind speed. Other variables, such as forecast month, forecast time, and temperature, also affect the GBDT results.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 114019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verónica Torralba ◽  
Francisco J Doblas-Reyes ◽  
Nube Gonzalez-Reviriego

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry W. O’Neill ◽  
Dudley B. Chelton ◽  
Steven K. Esbensen

Abstract The effects of surface wind speed and direction gradients on midlatitude surface vorticity and divergence fields associated with mesoscale sea surface temperature (SST) variability having spatial scales of 100–1000 km are investigated using vector wind observations from the SeaWinds scatterometer on the Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) satellite and SST from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) Aqua satellite. The wind–SST coupling is analyzed over the period June 2002–August 2008, corresponding to the first 6+ years of the AMSR-E mission. Previous studies have shown that strong wind speed gradients develop in response to persistent mesoscale SST features associated with the Kuroshio Extension, Gulf Stream, South Atlantic, and Agulhas Return Current regions. Midlatitude SST fronts also significantly modify surface wind direction; the surface wind speed and direction responses to typical SST differences of about 2°–4°C are, on average, about 1–2 m s−1 and 4°–8°, respectively, over all four regions. Wind speed perturbations are positively correlated and very nearly collocated spatially with the SST perturbations. Wind direction perturbations, however, are displaced meridionally from the SST perturbations, with cyclonic flow poleward of warm SST and anticyclonic flow poleward of cool SST. Previous observational analyses have shown that small-scale perturbations in the surface vorticity and divergence fields are related linearly to the crosswind and downwind components of the SST gradient, respectively. When the vorticity and divergence fields are analyzed in curvilinear natural coordinates, the wind speed contributions to the SST-induced vorticity and divergence depend equally on the crosswind and downwind SST gradients, respectively. SST-induced wind direction gradients also significantly modify the vorticity and divergence fields, weakening the vorticity response to crosswind SST gradients while enhancing the divergence response to downwind SST gradients.


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