An Isofactorial Change-of-Scale Model for the Wind Speed Probability Density Function

Abstract

AbstractThe wind speed probability density function (PDF) is used in a variety of applications in meteorology, oceanography, and climatology usually as a dataset comparison tool of a function of a quantity such as momentum flux or wind power density. The wind speed PDF is also a function of measurement scale and sampling error. Thus, quantities derived from a function of the wind PDF estimated from measurements taken at different scales may yield vastly different results. This is particularly true in the assessment of wind power density and studies of model subgrid-scale processes related to surface energy fluxes. This paper presents a method of estimating the PDF of wind speed representing a specific scale, whether that is in time, space, or time–space. The concepts used have been developed in the field of nonlinear geostatistics but have rarely been applied to meteorological problems. The method uses an expansion of orthogonal polynomials that incorporates a scaling parameter whose values can be found from the variance of wind speed at the desired scale. Possible uses of this technique are for scale homogenization of model or satellite datasets used in comparison studies, investigations of subgrid-scale processes for development of parameterization schemes, or wind power density assessment.