Using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements
At sea, wind forcing is responsible for the formation and development of surface waves and represents an important source of near-surface turbulence. Therefore, processes related to near-surface turbulence and wave breaking, such as sea spray emission and air-sea gas exchange, are often parameterise...
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ftethz:oai:www.research-collection.ethz.ch:20.500.11850/426914 2023-05-15T14:02:01+02:00 Using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements Landwehr, Sebastian Thurnherr, Iris Cassar, Nicolas Gysel-Beer, Martin Schmale, Julia 2020-06-30 application/application/pdf https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/426914 https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000426914 en eng Copernicus info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.5194/amt-13-3487-2020 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/wos/000545953600002 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/603445 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/426914 doi:10.3929/ethz-b-000426914 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International CC-BY Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 13 (6) info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion 2020 ftethz https://doi.org/20.500.11850/426914 https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000426914 https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-3487-2020 2022-04-25T14:11:32Z At sea, wind forcing is responsible for the formation and development of surface waves and represents an important source of near-surface turbulence. Therefore, processes related to near-surface turbulence and wave breaking, such as sea spray emission and air-sea gas exchange, are often parameterised with wind speed. Thus, shipborne wind speed measurements provide highly relevant observations. They can, however, be compromised by flow distortion due to the ship's structure and objects near the anemometer that modify the airflow, leading to a deflection of the apparent wind direction and positive or negative acceleration of the apparent wind speed. The resulting errors in the estimated true wind speed can be greatly magnified at low wind speeds. For some research ships, correction factors have been derived from computational fluid dynamic models or through direct comparison with wind speed measurements from buoys. These correction factors can, however, lose their validity due to changes in the structures near the anemometer and, thus, require frequent re-evaluation, which is costly in either computational power or ship time. Here, we evaluate if global atmospheric reanalysis data can be used to quantify the flow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements. The method is tested on data from the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition onboard the R/V Akademik Tryoshnikov, which are compared to ERA-5 reanalysis wind speeds. We find that, depending on the relative wind direction, the relative wind speed and direction measurements are biased by -37 % to +22 % and -17 degrees to +11 degrees respectively. The resulting error in the true wind speed is +11.5 % on average but ranges from -4 % to +41 % (5th and 95th percentile). After applying the bias correction, the uncertainty in the true wind speed is reduced to +/- 5 % and depends mainly on the average accuracy of the ERA-5 data over the period of the experiment. The obvious drawback of this approach is the potential intrusion of model biases in the correction factors. We show that this problem can be somewhat mitigated when the error propagation in the true wind correction is accounted for and used to weight the observations. We discuss the potential caveats and limitations of this approach and conclude that it can be used to quantify flow distortion bias for ships that operate on a global scale. The method can also be valuable to verify computational fluid dynamic studies of airflow distortion on research vessels. ISSN:1867-1381 ISSN:1867-8548 Article in Journal/Newspaper Antarc* Antarctic ETH Zürich Research Collection Antarctic The Antarctic |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
ETH Zürich Research Collection |
op_collection_id |
ftethz |
language |
English |
description |
At sea, wind forcing is responsible for the formation and development of surface waves and represents an important source of near-surface turbulence. Therefore, processes related to near-surface turbulence and wave breaking, such as sea spray emission and air-sea gas exchange, are often parameterised with wind speed. Thus, shipborne wind speed measurements provide highly relevant observations. They can, however, be compromised by flow distortion due to the ship's structure and objects near the anemometer that modify the airflow, leading to a deflection of the apparent wind direction and positive or negative acceleration of the apparent wind speed. The resulting errors in the estimated true wind speed can be greatly magnified at low wind speeds. For some research ships, correction factors have been derived from computational fluid dynamic models or through direct comparison with wind speed measurements from buoys. These correction factors can, however, lose their validity due to changes in the structures near the anemometer and, thus, require frequent re-evaluation, which is costly in either computational power or ship time. Here, we evaluate if global atmospheric reanalysis data can be used to quantify the flow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements. The method is tested on data from the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition onboard the R/V Akademik Tryoshnikov, which are compared to ERA-5 reanalysis wind speeds. We find that, depending on the relative wind direction, the relative wind speed and direction measurements are biased by -37 % to +22 % and -17 degrees to +11 degrees respectively. The resulting error in the true wind speed is +11.5 % on average but ranges from -4 % to +41 % (5th and 95th percentile). After applying the bias correction, the uncertainty in the true wind speed is reduced to +/- 5 % and depends mainly on the average accuracy of the ERA-5 data over the period of the experiment. The obvious drawback of this approach is the potential intrusion of model biases in the correction factors. We show that this problem can be somewhat mitigated when the error propagation in the true wind correction is accounted for and used to weight the observations. We discuss the potential caveats and limitations of this approach and conclude that it can be used to quantify flow distortion bias for ships that operate on a global scale. The method can also be valuable to verify computational fluid dynamic studies of airflow distortion on research vessels. ISSN:1867-1381 ISSN:1867-8548 |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Landwehr, Sebastian Thurnherr, Iris Cassar, Nicolas Gysel-Beer, Martin Schmale, Julia |
spellingShingle |
Landwehr, Sebastian Thurnherr, Iris Cassar, Nicolas Gysel-Beer, Martin Schmale, Julia Using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements |
author_facet |
Landwehr, Sebastian Thurnherr, Iris Cassar, Nicolas Gysel-Beer, Martin Schmale, Julia |
author_sort |
Landwehr, Sebastian |
title |
Using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements |
title_short |
Using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements |
title_full |
Using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements |
title_fullStr |
Using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements |
title_full_unstemmed |
Using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements |
title_sort |
using global reanalysis data to quantify and correct airflow distortion bias in shipborne wind speed measurements |
publisher |
Copernicus |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/426914 https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000426914 |
geographic |
Antarctic The Antarctic |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic The Antarctic |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic |
op_source |
Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 13 (6) |
op_relation |
info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.5194/amt-13-3487-2020 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/wos/000545953600002 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/603445 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/426914 doi:10.3929/ethz-b-000426914 |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/20.500.11850/426914 https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000426914 https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-3487-2020 |
_version_ |
1766272074125410304 |