Vaisala Energy Support
Doesn’t horizontal resolution matter? What about downscaling with weather models like WRF and MM5?
3TIER internal analysis has shown that downscaling the re-analysis data adds significant value to the hourly and daily correlations when compared to observed data. Improvements in the correlations on the monthly and inter-annual time scale due to downscaling are much less. If the final data are being used in applications where the fidelity of the hourly and daily values are critically important then downscaling can add value. However if these data are being used to perform a long-term correction – then the ability to distinguish a windy year from a non-windy year is more important. Downscaling adds little to no skill in the ability to sort years, especially for the ERA-Interim data which is at significantly higher resolution (80km) and includes many more vertical levels than the NNRP data (280km). While this result may come as a surprise – it can be better understood in the context of weather versus climate. Models such as WRF are weather simulation models. If actual climate variability is not captured in the re-analysis data, then a weather model can not recreate it. What the weather model can do is simulate weather patterns from the re-analysis data – hence the improvement on the hourly and especially daily time scales.
More Wind Online Tools Questions
- Which Wind Time Series dataset should I choose?
- Can I demo the 90 M Wind Prospecting Tools?
- What wind speed is shown on the map?
- How do I enter a location?
- How do I interpret the graph provided by the Monthly Mean Wind Speed Tool?
- What does the Annual Mean Wind Speed Tool provide?
- How do I interpret the wind rose provided by the Annual Mean Wind Rose Tool?
- Why do we show a +/- next to the annual value?
- What does the Wind Speed Distribution Tool provide?
- What wind speeds are shown on the map?
- What affects wind at a given site?
- How can I compare sites side-by-side?
- How do I change locations for individual tools?
- What is a hub height?
- What makes a good wind resource?
- What is a wind resource assessment?
- What do the colors on the map mean?
- What is the source of the information?
- How accurate are the Wind Prospecting Tools?
- Which Internet browsers does the 3TIER website support?
- Why does the map disappear?
- What data has been created?
- How was the data behind your map created?
- Does 3TIER incorporate observational data?
- What were 3TIER's data validation procedures?
- What happened to 3TIER’s Reference Wind Time Series Product?
- Why is ERA-I available everywhere but not NNRP-D?
- I notice that sometimes ERA-I and NNRP-D disagree, by quite a bit, which one should I use?
- Why do all the various datasets have different start and end times?
- Why are the long-term mean values of each data set so similar and why don’t they match the values I get when I download these data directly from the various global modeling centers?
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