Long Term Variability of Windspeed.

• Main Authors: Eller,A I, Blodgett,M L
• Other Authors: NAVAL RESEARCH LAB WASHINGTON DC
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1980
• Subjects: Meteorology; *WIND VELOCITY; *BAROMETRIC PRESSURE; VARIATIONS; SPECTRA; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS; FOURIER ANALYSIS; ARCTIC OCEAN ISLANDS; Bear Island(Norway); Van Mayen; PE63795N; WU03530; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Barents Sea; Bear Island; Jan Mayen; Norway; Norwegian Sea
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA091802; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA091802

Underwater acoustic sensors are subject to interfering ambient noise generated by the action of wind on the sea surface. Noise at frequencies above a few hundred Hz generally shows strong correlation with wind speed. A knowledge of the statistical variability of wind-speed is useful for predicting the properties of ambient noise. Values of surface wind speed and atmospheric pressure reported from weather stations at Jan Mayen in the Norwegian Sea and Bear Island in the Barents Sea over a two-year period were examined. It was found that the statistical distribution of wind speeds can be represented approximately as a Rayleigh distribution. Spectral analysis of the time series records of wind speed and pressure shows that most of the variability of these parameters is contributed by synoptic scale variations having periods of from a few days to a few weeks. The annual or seasonal variations has the largest signle Fourier coefficient but represents only a relatively small part of the total variance. (Author)