The Tall Tower Dataset: a unique initiative to boost wind energy research

Abstract

A dataset containing quality-controlled wind observations from 222 tall towers has been created. Wind speed and wind direction measurements covering the 1984–2017 period have been collected from existing tall towers around the world in an effort to boost the utilization of these non-standard atmospheric datasets, especially within the wind energy and research fields. Observations taken at several heights greater than 10 m above ground level have been retrieved from various sparse datasets and compiled in a unique collection with a common format, access, documentation and quality control. For the last, a total of 18 quality control checks have been considered to ensure the high quality of the wind records. Non-quality-controlled temperature, relative humidity and barometric pressure data from the towers have also been obtained and included in the dataset. The Tall Tower Dataset (Ramon and Lledó, 2019a) is published in the repository EUDAT and made available at https://doi.org/10.23728/b2share.136ecdeee31a45a7906a773095656ddb.