Means and Standard Deviations of Horizontal Wind Components

Abstract

An algorithm is presented that computes a measure of horizontal wind dispersion. The algorithm features a compact, machine economic structure that removes wind direction scale discontinuities. By requiring only one pass through the input data, the larger storage and extra time needed for a two pass algorithm are eliminated. This is especially helpful in real time data acquisition environments. Data are included for comparison of the described algorithm and two standard, less machine efficient algorithms.