A simulation study on risks to wind turbine arrays from thunderstorm downbursts in different atmospheric stability conditions

Thunderstorm downbursts have been reported to cause damage or failure to wind turbine arrays. We extend a large-eddy simulation model used in previous work to generate downburst-related inflow fields with a view toward defining correlated wind fields that all turbines in an array would experience together during a downburst. We are also...

Improving soil moisture and surface turbulent heat flux estimates by assimilation of SMAP brightness temperatures or soil moisture retrievals and GOES land surface temperature retrievals

Surface heat fluxes are vital to hydrological and environmental studies, but mapping them accurately over a large area remains a problem. In this study, brightness temperature (TB) observations or soil moisture retrievals from the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission and land surface temperature (LST) product from the...

Impact of soil moisture data resolution on soil moisture and surface heat flux estimates through data assimilation: A case study in the Southern Great Plains

The spatial heterogeneity and temporal variation of soil moisture and surface heat fluxes are key to many geophysical and environmental studies. It has been demonstrated that they can be mapped by assimilating soil thermal and wetness information into surface energy balance models. The aim of this work is to determine whether enhancing the...

On wind turbine loads during thunderstorm downbursts in contrasting atmospheric stability regimes

Severe winds produced by thunderstorm downbursts pose a serious risk to the structural integrity of wind turbines. However, guidelines for wind turbine design (such as the International Electrotechnical Commission Standard, IEC 61400-1) do not describe the key physical characteristics of such events realistically. In this study, a large-eddy...

Influence of driver characteristics on emissions and fuel consumption

Fuel consumption and atmospheric pollution emissions of vehicles depend on driving conditions, the characteristics of the driver and the car. The influence of driving style on the environmental aspects of a car journey has been investigated. Driver characteristics were determined by a Driver Behaviour Questionnaire and observed acceleration...

Improved short-term variability in the thermosphere-ionosphere-mesosphere-electrodynamics general circulation model

We report on a new source of tidal variability in the National Center for Atmospheric Research thermosphere-ionosphere-mesosphere-electrodynamics general circulation model (TIME-GCM). Lower boundary forcing of the TIME-GCM for a simulation of November–December 2009 based on 3-hourly Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Application ...