Measurements and Modeling of the Wind Profile Up to 600 meters at a Flat Coastal Site

Abstract

This study shows long-term ABL wind profile features by comparing long-range wind lidar measurements and the output from a mesoscale model. The study is based on 1-year pulsed lidar (Wind Cube 70) measurements of wind speed and direction from 100 to 600 m with vertical resolution of 50 m and time resolution of 10 min at a coastal site on the West coast of Denmark and WRF ARW (NCAR) simulations for the same period. The model evaluation is performed based on wind speed, wind direction, as well as statistical parameters of the Weibull distribution of the wind speed time series as function of height. It is found that (1) WRF is generally under predicting both the profiles of the measured wind speed, direction and power density, (2) the scatter of observations to model results of the wind speed does not change significantly with height between 100 and 600 m, and (3) the scale (A) and shape (k) parameters of the Weibull distribution above 100 m. The latter signifies that the model suggests a wider distribution in the wind speed compared to measurements. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014.