3
$\begingroup$

I'm trying to validate some work I've been doing on extracting wind direction measurements from data.

Where can I access historical wind direction data online that gives ~hourly measurements? Specifically I'm looking for measurements in July 2014 off the south coast of France.

If the time resolution is $<$hourly, that's better than nothing!

Thank you.

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
2
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ If you speak French, you might try to find data at MeteoFrance. $\endgroup$
    – daniel.heydebreck
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 13:47
  • $\begingroup$ The ebas Database, which is for air quality measurement data, also contains a few meteorological data sets. There is wind direction data available (matrix=met, component=wind_direction) for 8 French stations in July 2014. Unfortunately, none of the stations is located directly at the southern coast of France. But maybe it is better than nothing. $\endgroup$
    – daniel.heydebreck
    Commented Feb 17, 2017 at 13:54

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3
$\begingroup$

You can download the data from the CRU-NCEP database https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/ CRU stand for Climate Research Unit and it has the most accurate historical data available to the public. They are reanalyzed data from meteorological stations and ships. The highest resolution available is 0.5 latitude * 0.5 longitude degree grid. And for temporal resolution they have 6-hourly and daily. The data is in NetCDF format which is a format most map processing data use. If you don't know how to handle ncdf you could use Google Earth as well https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/cru_ts_3.23/ge/ .

To know more how the data is derived you can read this paper. Hope it helps. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.3711/abstract

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
0
1
$\begingroup$

I found good datasets on the EUMETSAT and CMEMS websites for anyone else who needs wind direction data. They both have global data sets for both wind speed and direction above the ocean surface and I've found the ASCAT data (available on both sites) to be of a high quality.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Please edit your answer and add the links (not just to the website, but to the pages describing the data). It would even be greater if you included (quoted )what kind of wind direction data can be found there. $\endgroup$
    – Jan Doggen
    Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 19:43
  • $\begingroup$ Agree with Jan that links will be very useful. But very glad you took the time to come back here and leave this for others with the same question in the future. Nothing better than the advice of someone who has faced the same needs/troubles! $\endgroup$
    – JeopardyTempest
    Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 19:54

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.