Standardization of marine surface wind speeds at coastal islands

Field measurements of surface wind can provide valuable information for a wide range of research and practices. However, surface wind records are usually influenced by topographic/terrain effects and direct use of the raw datasets may result in non-ignorable errors for subsequent applications. Thus, it is required to standardize surface wind speed measurements, i.e., to correct raw wind speeds to their potential values which are associated with a given mean speed duration (e.g., 10-min) at a fixed height (e.g., 10 m) above a reference terrain (e.g., open flat terrain). This paper focuses on the standardization of surface wind speed records measured at coastal islands. A standardization scheme is proposed, which takes into account the combined effects associated with topography and speed-dependence of marine roughness z_0m. A case study via wind tunnel testing is presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. The topographic effects on surface wind speeds are found to vary noticeably with approaching wind field that is characterized by different z_0m. The validity of the proposed scheme is examined through comparison of the standardized wind measurements at two coastal stations.