Title: Great Plains Turbulence Environment: Its Origins, Impact, and Simulation

This paper summarizes the known impacts of nocturnal turbulence on wind turbine performance and operations.

In this paper, we present a brief overview of our recent research results regarding the impact of organized or coherent inflow turbulence on the dynamic response of operating wind turbines. Previous field experimentation has demonstrated that the greatest structural fatigue damage tends to occur during the nighttime hours from coherent turbulence that develops in the stable, nocturnal atmospheric boundary layer. We have found that under such conditions, intense vertical wind shear and temperature gradients create resonant flow fields that are capable of imparting short-period loading and vibrational energy as wind turbine rotor blades pass through regions of organized or coherentmore » turbulence. This energy is subsequently propagated throughout the remainder of the structure, where it is often locally dissipated. We also briefly discuss our recent progress in developing a numerical simulation that includes such coherent inflow conditions that can be used to excite wind turbine design codes.« less

The U. S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program is running a small network of 915-MHz radar wind profilers (RWPs) at its Southern Great Plains Cloud and Radiation Testbed site in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Seasonal migration of passerines may cause significant interference with the operation of 915-MHz RWPs. The extent of this ''bird jamming'' depends on the radar's parameters, the place of deployment, the season, and the time of day. This poster presents a new diagnostic method for detecting possible bird contamination in RWP data, along with an evaluation of the method using a three-year data setmore » for two RWPs.« less

The U. S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program is running a small network of 915-MHz radar wind profilers (RWPs) at its Southern Great Plains Cloud and Radiation Testbed site in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas. Seasonal migration of passerines may cause significant interference with the operation of 915-MHz RWPs. The extent of this ''bird jamming'' depends on the radar's parameters, the place of deployment, the season, and the time of day. This poster presents a new diagnostic method for detecting possible bird contamination in RWP data, along with an evaluation of the method using a three-year data setmore » for two RWPs.« less

The effect of aerosols on the clouds, or the so-called aerosol indirect effect (AIE), is highly uncertain (Penner et al. 2001). The estimation of the AIE can vary from 0.0 to -4.8 W/m2 in Global Climate Models (GCM). Therefore, it is very important to investigate these interactions and cloud-related physical processes further. The Aerosol Intensive Operation Period (AIOP) at the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site in May 2003 dedicated some effort towards the measurement of the Cloud Condensation Nucleus concentration (CCN) as a function of super-saturation and in relating CCN concentration to aerosol composition and size distribution. Furthermore, airborn measurementmore » for the cloud droplet concentration was also available. Therefore this AIOP provides a good opportunity to examine the AIE. In this study, we use a Cloud Resolving Model (CRM), i.e., Active Tracer High-resolution Atmospheric Model (ATHAM), to discuss the effect of aerosol loadings on cloud droplet effective radius (Re) and concentration. The case we examine is a stratiform cloud that occurred on May 17, 2003.« less