Statistics of wind direction and its increments

Journal Article · Thu Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2000 · Physics of Fluids (1994)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.870401· OSTI ID:20216385

Doorn, Eric van ^[1]; Dhruva, Brindesh ^[1]; Sreenivasan, Katepalli R ^[1]; Cassella, Victor ^[2]

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1. Mason Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8286 (United States)
2. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973 (United States)

We study some elementary statistics of wind direction fluctuations in the atmosphere for a wide range of time scales (10{sup -4} sec to 1 h), and in both vertical and horizontal planes. In the plane parallel to the ground surface, the direction time series consists of two parts: a constant drift due to large weather systems moving with the mean wind speed, and fluctuations about this drift. The statistics of the direction fluctuations show a rough similarity to Brownian motion but depend, in detail, on the wind speed. This dependence manifests itself quite clearly in the statistics of wind-direction increments over various intervals of time. These increments are intermittent during periods of low wind speeds but Gaussian-like during periods of high wind speeds. (c) 2000 American Institute of Physics.

• OSTI ID: 20216385
• Journal Information: Physics of Fluids (1994), Vol. 12, Issue 6; Other Information: PBD: Jun 2000; ISSN 1070-6631
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
WIND
STATISTICAL DATA
FLUCTUATIONS
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
BROWNIAN MOVEMENT
VELOCITY
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
THEORETICAL DATA