Estimation of Offshore Wind Resources in Coastal Waters off Shirahama Using ENVISAT ASAR Images

Abstract

Offshore wind resource maps for the coastal waters off Shirahama, Japan were made based on 104 images of the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) onboard the ENVISAT satellite. Wind speed fields were derived from the SAR images with the geophysical model function CMOD5.N. Mean wind speed and energy density were estimated using the Weibull distribution function. These accuracies were examined in comparison with in situ measurements from the Shirahama offshore platform and the Southwest Wakayama buoy (SW-buoy). Firstly, it was found that the SAR-derived 10 m-height wind speed had a bias of 0.52 m/s and a RMSE of 2.33 m/s at Shirahama. Secondly, it was found that the mean wind speeds estimated from SAR images and the Weibull distribution function were overestimated at both sites. The ratio between SAR-derived and in situ measured mean wind speeds at Shirahama is 1.07, and this value was used for a long-term OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2013, 5 2884 bias correction in the SAR-derived wind speed. Finally, mean wind speed and wind energy density maps at 80 m height were made based on the corrected SAR-derived 10 m-height wind speeds and the ratio U 80 /U 10 calculated from the mesoscale meteorological model WRF.

Hub Height Ocean Winds over the North Sea Observed by the NORSEWInD Lidar Array: Measuring Techniques, Quality Control and Data Management

“…Often information on air temperature, air temperature differences, humidity, boundary-layer height and other parameters are used for in-depth analysis of atmospheric boundary-layer behavior and structures. This is unfortunately not possible with this dataset except if combined with other data sources such as numerical model results, satellite data or other sources as in [38,39].…”