An updated description of the strong-wind climate of South Africa

Abstract

This paper provides an outline of the process followed to compile the information that should serve as input for the determination of the characteristic wind speed across the country. The main aspects considered here are the physical conditions, the attributes of the strong-wind data, the statistical treatment of the data, the resulting quantile wind speed and the differences between the existing and new wind maps. In an accompanying paper at this conference the results of cluster analysis are presented, through which strong-wind generating mechanisms are characterised.