Project title
Geostatistical downscaling of wind field predictions using high resolution satellite data (GeoWindSat)
Funding Program
Structural Funds of the European Union in Cyprus
Restart 2016-2020 (Research Promotion Foundation)
Award URL
http://geowindsat.cut.ac.cy/
Funding code
INTERNATIONAL/OTHER/0118/0120
GeoWindSat
Start date
February 1, 2019
Description
The project’s main scientific objective is to refine the relatively coarse wind information available through numerical weather prediction models, thus contributing towards a more detailed offshore wind speed and direction assessment for Cyprus, via a suite of different data sources and advanced geostatistical methods for data fusion. The aim is the development of an innovative methodology combining heterogeneous data and geostatistical techniques for offshore wind resource assessment and related uncertainty estimation. A 5-years data set composed by 6-hours interval data will be obtained by the Uncertainties in Ensembles of Regional Reanalyses (UERRA) numerical weather predictions (NWP) from 2014 onwards. In situ meteorological station data will also be collected, processed and analyzed, in order to establish mismatch statistics of the NWP data. Moreover, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data obtained by the Sentinel-1 satellite platform will be collected, processed and analyzed, in a geostatistical framework to provide an uncertainty-aware wind resource assessment at a finer spatial resolution. Because of its high spatial resolution, Sentinel provides detailed information on the spatial variability of offshore wind, hence it is considered a valuable tool for offshore wind assessment and a valuable source for the long-term validation of wind NWP data. Finally, the corrected NWP and Sentinel-1 wind datasets will be integrated for the spatial downscaling of NWP data. Having parameterized the downscaling procedure between the two data sets the ground will be set for efficient future downscaling of historical NWP before 2014 and with no restriction to Sentinel-1 fine data availability. The project aims to expand the researchers’ network of contacts and provide opportunities for the continuation of relevant research careers in universities and/or private enterprises in Cyprus. The role of collaboration and networking between research teams which are active in the proposed research framework is crucial in terms of exchanging expertise and technical know-how.