Near-Surface Wind Speed

Daily near-surface wind speeds (u) grids have been developed over all of Australia at a 0.01° spatial resolution by interpolating terrestrial anemometers measurements from an expanded network for 1975–2006. For these new grids, the Australian-averaged u trend for 1975–2006 was -0.009 m s-1 a-1 (agreeing with earlier site-based studies) with stilling over 88% of the land-surface. This new dataset can be used in numerous environmental applications, including benchmarking general circulation models to improve the representation of key parameters that govern u estimation. The methodology implemented here can be applied globally. Dataset Creation Date: 2008-07-15 Datsets updated on Jan 2013 to include years 2007 - 2014