Variations in long term wind speed during different decades in Arabian Sea and bay of Bengal

Abstract

A study has been carried out by comparing the extreme wind speeds estimated based on NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data for 100 years return period using Fischer Tippet-1 (commonly known as Gumbel) and Weibull distributions for three locations (off Goa, Visakhapatnam and Machili-patnam) in the north Indian Ocean. The wind dataset for Goa is compared with that from ERA-40 data. For higher wind speeds (12-20 m s-1), NCEP wind speed has higher percentage of occurrence than that of ERA-40. Analysis has shown slight upward trend in the annual maximum wind for location off Machilipatnam with an increase of 1.2 cm s-1 per year and a decreasing trend of -1.3 cm s-1 per year in the case of Goa. The Weibull distribution with shape parameter 2 fits the annual maximum wind data better than FT-1 distribution. © Indian Academy of Sciences.