An objective method for estimating wind-speed fields from wind-direction fields

✍ Scribed by R. L. Mancuso

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1970
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 675 KB
• Volume: 96
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0035-9009
• DOI: 10.1002/qj.49709641004

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

An objective method is described for obtaining an estimate of the wind‐speed values within the interior of a region when only the streamline field for the region and the wind‐speed values along the boundary are given. The method has been developed and tested for possible use in data‐scarce areas where conventional wind analyses can not be made, but where wind‐direction fields might be derived with reasonable accuracy and detail from satellite cloud photographs. The basic approach consists of computing the wind speeds within the interior of the region by stepping downwind along the streamlines from the known wind‐speed values at the inflow boundary. Divergence is assumed to be constant along each streamline and is determined in a manner such that successive computational cycles minimize the differences between the computed and known wind speeds at the outflow boundary. The testing was conducted using known wind‐velocity fields over the United States and also ATS‐3 cloud‐motion data over the Caribbean. The computed wind‐speed fields were found to be in reasonably good agreement with the actual wind‐speed fields.