Assessment of a New Anemometry System for the Met Office’s Moored Buoy Network

Abstract

Since the late 1980s the Met Office has operated a network of Marine Automatic Weather Stations (MAWS) around the United Kingdom. The network includes a number of instrumented moored buoys, which are mainly in exposed open-ocean locations. The anemometry is usually the first component to degrade or fail, often after 6?9 months at sea. Because the buoys are normally serviced on an annual basis, there is a need for a more durable wind system. This paper presents results from the initial deployments of a new anemometry system based on the Gill WindSonic on some of the Met Office?s moored buoys, where the new wind system has been deployed alongside a conventional cup-and-vane system for comparison. The results suggest that the new wind system has shown no evidence of deterioration in its measurement accuracy, even after 8?11 months at sea. However, there is evidence of degradation in the quality of the wind data from the collocated cup-and-vane system. As a result, the new wind system will be deployed across the network to improve wind measurement reliability.