Improvement of the initialization of the WEST wind ressource software for mountainous region in cold climates

• Main Author: Pham, Philippe
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: École de technologie supérieure 2013
• Subjects: Génie logiciel; Processus éoliens; Climatologie – Yukon - Whitehorse; Régions montagneuses; Hiver; cartographie; froude; initialisation; MESO-échelle; modèle; potentiel; WEST; Yukon; Whitehorse
• Online Access: https://espace.etsmtl.ca/id/eprint/1156/; https://espace.etsmtl.ca/id/eprint/1156/1/PHAM_Philippe.pdf; https://espace.etsmtl.ca/id/eprint/1156/2/PHAM_Philippe-web.pdf

This study aims to improve the WEST software for wind resource assessment purposes, and obtain better simulated results of the wind for the mountainous region of Whitehorse. It was found that the model overestimated the wind speeds, and Pinard et al. (2009) suggested several improvements and modifications to the model, where some of these modifications were considered and implemented in this study. The first suggestion was the introduction of the Froude number and correction factors in the classification scheme. The Froude number was successful in capturing stable climate states and thermal stratification. The correction factors were able to modify the frequency of certain climate states to match the frequency of their occurrence as seen in the observations through Radiosondes. These stable climate states would reduce the speed of the wind, and mean difference of the simulation with respect to the wind stations, would go from 0.8 m/s to 0.1 m/s. The second suggestion was to raise the initial reference topography to a level appropriate to the region, in order to attenuate the spurious cliffs seen around the domain. It was shown that these cliffs would affect the flow and cause an outflow of the wind. By implementing this modification, the modeled wind speeds were further reduced. The third suggestion did not aim to reduce the wind speeds, but to correct the simulated wind directions that were found to be erroneous in previous studies. A modification to the code during the initialization of the model was implemented, where the data levels below the terrain for initialization profiles were replaced by extrapolated values from values at higher levels. This correction provided a minimal change to the simulation of this study; however it was able to correct the directions when applied to the simulations presented in past studies using a different set of climate states. These results show that a reduction of the simulated wind speeds for the region of Whitehorse was achieved, and it was possible to correct the wind ...