The CSIC leads a "pioneering" study to assess errors in wind measurement

VALENCIA, July 27 (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Center for Research on Desertification (CIDE) - a joint center of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), the University of Valencia (UV) and the Generalitat Valenciana - has published a "pioneering" study to assess errors in measurement of the wind.

One of the main limitations in the study of climate change is the availability of quality data over time. This also happens for the wind speed, whose data depends on the proper functioning of the measurement sensors, specifically the anemometers. These instruments deteriorate and are replaced by others of better precision, which introduces an artificial error that alters the quantification of the changes in the wind.

This is precisely what a CIDE team is trying to quantify and correct, which has just published the first study that quantifies these errors from an official meteorological observatory.

This is CIDE's Climatoc-Lab, which leads pioneering research on the quantification of errors introduced by changes in anemometers in the climatic series of wind speed. In addition, it applies corrections so that wind measurements are robust over time, eliminating artificial noise introduced by measurement errors.

The article, published in July in the magazine 'Atmospheric Research' and in which researchers from the CSIC's Interdisciplinary Climate and Climate Services Thematic Platform have participated, shows a real case study of the impact of these changes on the historical series of velocity of the wind from the official meteorological observatory of San Sebastián-Igueldo, dependent on the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet).

For the person in charge of the work, the researcher member of the PTI Climate of the CSIC César Azorín, "the novelty of this study is the quantification of the impact of the changes of the anemometers on the measurements of wind speed from a real meteorological observatory. Previous studies had performed field and wind tunnel experiments under predefined conditions."

Thus, the CIDE team measured three factors: the change in the type of anemometer (SEAC model versus THIES); change in the height of its installation; and the age of both models.

"The results show a significant impact of these changes in the measurement of wind speed, whose errors were corrected to correctly estimate whether changes have occurred in surface winds," reveals César Azorín in a statement.

Specifically, the biases in the measurements of average wind speed and maximum gusts due to the performance of the most modern sensor, THIES, with respect to the old SEAC, represent an increase of around 4-5% with respect to the annual averages, according to the study data.

These errors also influence the estimates of other processes where wind speed plays a fundamental role, such as evapotranspiration and the availability of water resources, and wind energy, among others.

But the applications are multiple, from the design and manufacture of wind sensors to the use of these sensors in areas such as wind energy prospecting or civil engineering, since correctly measuring the wind load is a decisive factor in the construction of the structure, components and coating of buildings.

"Climate science bases its research on data from different sources, mainly from two: data observed in Earth observation systems such as weather stations or satellites, and data simulated from numerical models," argues the CSIC researcher.

"Although the advances in modeling are evident in the last decades, the data observed in meteorological stations represent reality and are the main basis for quantifying past climate changes. Therefore, the quantification of errors in meteorological observation and the Improving the quality of the climatic wind series are key to correctly estimating the changes in wind speed in recent decades," he concludes.

international comparative study

National meteorological services around the world and climate assessment groups will benefit from these findings, according to César Azorín, "since errors in wind speed measurements and maximum gusts can be minimized by implementing better observation protocols. Currently, CIDE's Climatoc-Lab is developing, in collaboration with the New Zealand National Institute for Water and Atmosphere Research (NIWA), a unique experiment in the world where various anemometers widely used by the different National Meteorological Services are compared to quantify deviations and differences in wind measurement between them.