Wavelet Scale Variance Analysis of Wind Extremes in Mountainous Terrains

Abstract

The 10-min average wind speed series recorded at 130 stations distributed rather homogeneously in the territory of Switzerland are investigated. Fixing a percentile-based threshold of the wind speed distribution, a wind extreme is defined as the duration of the sequence of consecutive wind values above the threshold. This definition allows to analyze the sequence of extremes as a temporal point process marked by their duration. Representing the sequence of wind extremes by the inter-extreme interval series, the wavelet variance, a useful tool to investigate the variance of a time series across scales, was applied in order to find a link between the wavelet scales and several topographic parameters. Our findings suggest that the mean duration of wind extremes and mean inter-extreme time are positively correlated and that such relationship depends on the threshold of the wind speed. Furthermore, the threshold of the wind speed distribution correlates best with a terrain parameter related to the Laplacian of terrain elevations; and, in particular, for wavelet scales less than 3, the terrain exposure may explain the formation of extreme wind speeds.