Wind data at and above the 500-mb level taken from the El Paso, Tex., rawinsonde Station (rawin) and pressure-height data at the same levels from Albuquerque, N. Mex., Midland, Tex., Tucson, Ariz., and Chihuahua, Mexico, during the 1965-66 winter and the 1966 summer periods were used t o study geostrophic wind deviation. Geostrophic winds were computed directly from the pressure-height data by a finite-difference method and compared to the actual wind as measured at El Paso. The variations of the "apparent" geostrophic wind deviation with wind speed and pressure-height were examined. Errors involved were analyzed and the "true" geostrophic wind deviation and the total wind accelerations were estimated. Results of the study reveal: (1) that despite the improvement in the accuracies of the radiosonde pressure-height and rawin data, the errors in the data still account for a large portion of the apparent geostrophic wind deviation at higher levels (at and above the 150-mb level) ; (2) that to use the geostrophic wind approximation in cases with wind speed less than 20 m/s would probably result in vector wind errors of the order of 40 percent or more; and (3) that the mean true geostrophic wind deviation increases when the mean actual wind speed increases, and the estimated mean total wind accelerations range from 1 X 10" to 5 X lo-' m.s-' at and above the 500-mb level.
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