Investigating Temporal-Spatial Distribution and the Possibility of Wind Gust Prediction in Iran

Today we are witnessing a multitude of destructive natural meteorological and hydrological phenomena that cause more financial and environmental losses to human life. One of the atmospheric phenomena that can have a direct impact on flight safety, transportation, structures, energy and many other aspects of human life is wind gust. The aim of this study was to investigate the temporal and spatial distribution of wind gust in Iran over a period of 15 years and to evaluate an experimental method called WPD to predict this phenomenon using the output of the WRF model. For this purpose, the data recorded in 32 synoptic stations between 2004 and 2018 were studied. The results showed that the number of wind gusts occurred in the southeast and northwest Iran was much higher than other regions, while the frequency of convective wind gusts has been higher in the western half of Iran. In general, the frequency of wind gust had an increasing trend during the studied period and reached its maximum in 2018. Moreover, most convective wind gust reports have been related to spring. The highest number of wind gust reports with 67% belonged to the first half of the year. However, only 13% of the reports belonged to the autumn. Most of the wind gusts were reported between 12:00 and 18:00 local standard time (0800 to 1400 UTC). Among several wind gust forecasting methods, the relationship used in the WRF post processing system (WPD) was selected and its performance in Iran was evaluated. The results of the method on 885 non-convective wind gust indicated the optimal performance of the method for forecasting wind gust in Iran (RMSE=3.23, MAE=2.83, MSE=13.4 and R=0.71).