IEM Daily Feature
Thursday, 09 September 2010

Wind components

Posted: 09 Sep 2010 06:01 AM

The wind speed and direction can be broken into two components. These are a south to north (v wind) and west to east (u wind) component. [Those of you that failed geometry may wish to vote bad now]. The featured graph presents the daily averaged u and v wind speed component. This chart shows a clear annual cycle. Outside of the summer months, the jet stream is often nearby and tends to help promote dominant westerly winds. The v winds show us the dominant air temperature advection regimes with northerly (negative v values) during the winter time and warm southerly (positive v) in the summer time. September is shown as a transition period with westerlies increasing and southerlies decreasing.

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Tags:   wind   climate