Annual variations in sea surface wind speed around Japan observed by ASCAT

Abstract:

Sea surface wind speeds and these statistics can be applied for many marine industrial activities. For example, the averaged wind speed is crucial information for a site selection of an offshore wind farm. It has widely been recognized that a total amount of the offshore wind generation is strongly depended on the annual average wind speeds. A advanced scatterometer (ASCAT), which is a kind of scatterometer aboard METOP-A and B, has observed sea surface wind speeds at the height of 10 m above the sea surface approximately twice a day using active microwaves. The annual average wind speed can be calculated from the observed wind speed. For an actual use of the annual average wind speed, generalities and representativeness of the wind speed must be clarified.

To investigate annual variations in sea surface wind speed around Japan (120°E to 165°E, 19°N to 49°N), the annual average wind speeds and these standard deviations are calculated from 5 years of ASCAT observations from 2010 through 2014.

It is found that there are some sea areas where standard deviations are relatively higher than their surroundings. Annual average wind speed maps indicate that the high standard deviation is caused by strong winds from Eurasia in the winter of 2011 in part of North Pacific Ocean and Sea of Okhotsk. Additionally standard deviations for only winter are also higher than for summer in those sea areas. Therefore the strong wind speed in the winter of a particular year can easily affect to the annual average wind speed. Meanwhile off the coast of Niigata and Hokkaido, there are also higher standard deviation areas than their surroundings. Differences between monthly maximum wind speeds for the winter and minimum wind speeds for the summer in these areas are larger and the large differences seem to be a cause of the high standard deviations.