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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS Guest
2024-11-24 9:57 |
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2011 Meeting
Section: Atmosphere and Earth Science; Environment Protection
Title:
Impacts of wind farms on weather radar data
Authors:
Sorin Burcea
Affiliation:
National Meteorological Administration, 97 Bucuresti Ploiesti, Bucharest, Romania
Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest,P.O.BOX Mg-11, Bucharest, Romania
E-mail
sorin.burcea@meteoromania.ro
Keywords:
weather radar, wind farm
Abstract:
Lately, the use of wind farms in Romania to generate electricity is growing. Wind turbines cause contamination of weather radar signals that is under certain conditions difficult to distinguish from weather echoes. Areas of false reflectivities, mean radial velocity and spectrum width data may appear in base data displays. Partial beam blockage can occur for larger wind farms and those that extend further into the radar beam. Most often encountered errors due to wind farm returns are anomalous precipitation accumulations, and false detection and inaccuracies in mesocyclone detection. These artifacts can affect and confuse forecasters and other radar data users. Since data from weather radars are key components in the decision making process of issuing severe weather warnings and nowcasting forecasts, and numerical weather models assimilation, this paper documents and addresses some of the impacts of wind farms on radar data. The WSR–98D radar at Medgidia was chosen for this study. A combination of low-resolution radar products and high-resolution data was used to document the impacts. The data have been used to construct a climatology of wind farm echo observation. The results of the study show that when wind farms are located close to the radar site, the wind farm tower and rotating blades can impact radar data quality. Based on the analysis, potential impacts are estimated: false reflectivity echoes, anomalous precipitation accumulations, disturbed areas into radial velocities.
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