Abstract
We study some elementary statistics of wind direction fluctuations in the atmosphere for a wide range of time scales (10-4 sec to 1 h), and in both vertical and horizontal planes. In the plane parallel to the ground surface, the direction time series consists of two parts: a constant drift due to large weather systems moving with the mean wind speed, and fluctuations about this drift. The statistics of the direction fluctuations show a rough similarity to Brownian motion but depend, in detail, on the wind speed. This dependence manifests itself quite clearly in the statistics of wind-direction increments over various intervals of time. These increments are intermittent during periods of low wind speeds but Gaussian-like during periods of high wind speeds.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1529-1534 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Physics of Fluids |
Volume | 12 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2000 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computational Mechanics
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Mechanics of Materials
- Mechanical Engineering
- Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes