Surface Wind Speed Distributions
Abstract
Some weapon systems are sensitive to winds in the lowest layers of the atmosphere. Wind speed distributions and random wind speeds derived from the distributions are often required to help determine the operational capabilities of these systems. A literature survey revealed investigators usually used either a log-normal or a Weibull distribution as the model for the distribution of wind speeds independent of direction. In addition to these two distributions, a gamma distribution is also evaluated in this report. Wind speeds observed in three different geographical regions during nine selected meteorological conditions (weather classes), three diurnal time periods, and five seasonal time periods were evaluated. This report contains the results of the wind speed analysis for some of the combinations of weather classes, diurnal time periods, and seasonal time periods for each of the three geographical regions--European Lowlands, European Highlands, and Mideast Desert. The observed wind speed distributions were adequately presented by the analytical distributions except in a few cases. For those exceptions, the observed empirical wind speed distributions should be used rather than the analytical distributions to generate random wind speeds in simulation studies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA253268
Entities
People
- Bruce. T. Miers
- Elton P. Avara