Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Examples of older maps are given in Rohatgi and Nelson [17, chaps. 5 and 6]. China and India
have installed substantial capacity of wind turbines, which means that resource assessment pre-
ceded the installation.
More detailed assessments are available from measurements to provide a database for wind
power by state, region, and nation, and to delineate possible locations for wind farms. Even micro
siting for wind turbines within wind farms is important.
4.4 oCean WindS
Ocean winds are and have been measured by ships and instruments on buoys. Now complete cover-
age of the oceans is available using reflected microwaves from satellites [18, 19]. A physically based
algorithm calculates ocean wind speed and direction at 10 m from surface roughness measure-
ments. Water vapor, cloud water, and rain rate are also calculated. This algorithm is a product of 15
years of refinements and improvements. Data are the orbital daily observations mapped to a 0.25°
grid, and then averages are calculated for 3 days, a week, and a month. Images of the data can be
viewed on websites for the world, by region, or selected area.
At the Remote Sensing Systems website images can be viewed in the browse/download section. For
SSM/I and TMI satellites the wind speed images do not include direction and have a maximum value of
12 m/s. Dynamic Data Imaging lets you select region, dates, and zoom factor, and also gives statistics.
There is no dynamic imaging, but world is divided into regions. Ocean winds are not available
within 25 km of the shore, as radar reflections off the bottom of the ocean skew the data.
Notice that ocean winds will indicate onshore winds for islands, coasts, and also some inland
regions of higher winds. Two regions of average wind speeds of 10 m/s due to the northeast trade
winds are in the Istmus of Teohuantepec, Mexico, and the Arenal region of Costa Rica, where winds
are funneled by the land topography.
QuikScat wind vectors: 2003/08/11 - morning passes - Gulf of Mexico
260
265
270
275
280
285
290
295
300
31
31
26
26
21
21
16
16
11
11
Remote sensing systems
www. remss.com
6
6
12:12 UTC
10:30 UTC
Land
Wind Speed:
No data
0
5
10
15
20
25
30+ 0
1000 2000+
(meters/second)
(meters amsl)
FigUre 4.4
Example of daily satellite passes for Gulf of Mexico.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search