Vaisala Energy Support
What were 3TIER's data validation procedures?
To assess the quality of the information provided by 3TIER’s global wind dataset, wind speeds were compared with publicly available wind speed observations from the independent data source, National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Automated Data Processing (ADP) surface observations dataset. The stations with 4-letter ICAO location indicators were chosen from the subset of NCEP-ADP stations, because they have more reliable data than other stations in the dataset.
Time-series data from these stations were visually inspected, and stations with obvious data problems were excluded from the validation. The NCEP-ADP wind speeds were compared with wind speeds from 3TIER’s global wind dataset at a height of 10 m. While it is likely that some NCEP-ADP station anemometers are at heights lower than 10 m, few are expected to be higher than 10 m. This method was used consistently across every region solely for validation purposes and observations were not used to adjust data shown by the Wind Prospecting Tools in any way. In the final comparison with actual NCEP-ADP direct observations, the annual mean wind speeds provided by 3TIER’s global wind dataset have a difference of less than 0.5 m/s for 50% of stations and a difference of less than 1 m/s for 78% of stations. The overall bias is +0.05 m/s relative to NCEP-ADP observations, and the RMSE (Root Mean Squared Error) is 0.93 m/s.
For additional information, please see 3TIER's global wind validation white papers:
Global Wind Validation White Paper
Regional Wind Validation White Papers
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 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?
- Doesn’t horizontal resolution matter? What about downscaling with weather models like WRF and MM5?
- 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?
If you didn't find what you were looking for, please contact 3TIER Support for additional assistance.