A Quality-Control Routine for Hourly Wind Observations

Abstract

The quality of hourly wind speed and direction observations from 41 northeastern U.S. first-order weather stations is evaluated with regard to the recognition of individual observations that are either obviously in error or of suspect quality. An automated quality-control routine is developed to screen these individual hourly wind reports obtained from the National Climatic Data Center TD-3280 dataset. Using this routine, observations are assessed based on their internal consistency (i.e., 1-min average winds must not exceed the daily peak gust), temporal variability, and spatial consistency. The evaluation of over 12.5 million hourly observations indicated that the quality of these hourly data is quite good. Fewer than 0.1% of the values, occurring on 2.1% of the days, fail the quality-control checks.