Calculation of a Mass-Consistent Two-Dimensional Wind Field with Divergence Control

Abstract

The aim of this paper is the calculation of mass-consistent wind velocity field in a two-dimensional domain Ω on the basis of sparse measurements collected by wind-measuring stations. Measured data are used to estimate an initial field. The result is obtained by a weighted interpolation method. An iterative scan procedure is used in which the radius of influence of each station over the surrounding grid points is decreased at each step of iteration. To adjust the initial field into a mass-consistent velocity wind field, a new technique is presented that is meant to extract only the purely divergent component of the wind velocity field. This component is then either suitably manipulated, reduced and reintroduced in the total wind field, or completely neglected. The main idea of the method is to obtain a mass-consistent wind by controlling the magnitude of the purely divergent component without completely destroying all the information connected with its spatial pattern. On the basis of a test case, the quality of the proposed method is assessed, and a good agreement with observations is found.