Validation of WRF generated wind field in complex terrain

Abstract

Spatial and temporal characteristics of simulated wind field – stemming from the mesoscale numerical weather prediction system WRF with boundary conditions from ERA5 reanalysis data – are validated against measurements in complex terrain. In addition to finding statistical error metrics in the form of bias, RMSE, and correlation coefficients, the study carries out spectral comparisons in the form of power spectral densities and coherence functions. The spectral values of the WRF-generated wind speeds are lower compared to what is seen for the measured data, while the coherence function yield higher values. However, there is a significant improvement of the spectral characteristics of the WRF-generated wind speeds from those of the ERA5 wind speeds.

Keywords

• mesoscale wind modeling
• model validation
• spectral characteristics
• complex terrain