Enhancement of the United States extreme wind database and implications for extreme wind climatology
type: CreativeWork
description: Despite the substantial progress made in recent years to improve the characterization of extreme wind climatology in the contiguous United States, uncertainties still remain in its formal quantification. The importance of an accurate assessment of extreme wind climate is paramount, however, due to the outsized weight that the “basic wind speed” value carries in computations of design wind loads specified in ASCE 7 standards. One of many avenues towards improving the accuracy of basic wind speed values is improving the recorded wind observations from which basic wind speeds are derived. The aim of this study is enhance this body of observations—called the extreme wind database—and to provide additional techniques of improving the understanding of extreme wind climatology in the United States. The existing extreme wind database, formed using the Integrated Surface Dataset (ISD) 3505, was improved most significantly by nearly doubling its spatial resolution by extending the length of time over which observations are reported by approximately 10 years. Two additional techniques were developed that aimed to address temporal and spatial resolution issues related to climatology characterization. One of these employed the use of high temporal resolution wind observations from the Dataset 6405 (DS 6405) and the other made use of high spatial resolution wind observations obtained from the Oklahoma Mesonet (OKM). The improvements and additional techniques were quantified using a standardized extreme value analysis procedure to produce a common metric for comparison: a primordial basic wind speed analog called “V50” that can be compared across datasets of highly disparate character. Full suites of V50 values were generated for a control group of wind observation databases (i.e. existing databases) as well as a set of databases containing the improvements and additional techniques employed. Using numerous graphical and geospatial analysis methods, the results of database improve…
abstract: Despite the substantial progress made in recent years to improve the characterization of extreme wind climatology in the contiguous United States, uncertainties still remain in its formal quantification. The importance of an accurate assessment of extreme wind climate is paramount, however, due to the outsized weight that the “basic wind speed” value carries in computations of design wind loads specified in ASCE 7 standards. One of many avenues towards improving the accuracy of basic wind speed values is improving the recorded wind observations from which basic wind speeds are derived. The aim of this study is enhance this body of observations—called the extreme wind database—and to provide additional techniques of improving the understanding of extreme wind climatology in the United States. The existing extreme wind database, formed using the Integrated Surface Dataset (ISD) 3505, was improved most significantly by nearly doubling its spatial resolution by extending the length of time over which observations are reported by approximately 10 years. Two additional techniques were developed that aimed to address temporal and spatial resolution issues related to climatology characterization. One of these employed the use of high temporal resolution wind observations from the Dataset 6405 (DS 6405) and the other made use of high spatial resolution wind observations obtained from the Oklahoma Mesonet (OKM). The improvements and additional techniques were quantified using a standardized extreme value analysis procedure to produce a common metric for comparison: a primordial basic wind speed analog called “V50” that can be compared across datasets of highly disparate character. Full suites of V50 values were generated for a control group of wind observation databases (i.e. existing databases) as well as a set of databases containing the improvements and additional techniques employed. Using numerous graphical and geospatial analysis methods, the results of database improve…
author: Zickar, Alexander Steven
language: en
keywords: wind, extreme, climatology, database, ASOS, United States, ISD 3505, DS 6405, Oklahoma Mesonet, extreme value analysis, observation network
date published: 2019-07-17
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:44Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105660