Where can I acquire global wind (speed and direction) data?
Preferably in some kind of GIS format and free of charge.
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You could check out the sources quoted for this great weather visualisation at http://earth.nullschool.net/– user965586Commented May 9, 2015 at 16:20
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While I agree that is a very cool visualization (even thought about posting it as a comment myself, since it was the first Google result), this doesn't really answer the question and would be better as a comment. At best it is a link-only answer, which you could improve by listing those sources here within your answer. It would be even better if you provided links to those sources and specific pages where the data is available. If it even is data and not a model.– Chris WCommented May 9, 2015 at 16:25
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Guess I'll learn to do better. Maybe you could have beat me to it and posted the link...– user965586Commented May 9, 2015 at 16:30
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Indeed it is a very nice looking visualization, but my main difficulty here is getting the data myself. Checking out the sources didn't get me very far. It shouldn't be as a WFS or WMS, simply a vector or raster layer displaying information on wind conditions globally. The spatial and temporal resolution would be something that i had to look into deeper after finding a good source.– anehCommented May 9, 2015 at 16:40
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1Can you make this a bit clearer? For example, are you looking for climatic data (e.g. mean / deviation by month), or by near-future forecasts? Do you need surface (e.g. 2m or 10m) or on pressure levels at specific altitudes? It might help if you can say what you actually want the data for.– BradHardsCommented May 9, 2015 at 23:22
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2 Answers
The available free gridded global data mostly relates to near-surface wind speed and direction over global oceans. Free global land surface wind speed datasets are few.
None that I know come in GIS format, as each cell has two data values, one for speed and one for vector - but more digging might provide disaggregation and the possibility of mapping at least speed as a raster dataset in GIS.
For ocean data, there are various satellite scatterometer datasets. Try:
QuikSCAT: http://www.remss.com/missions/qscat; https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/quikscat-near-sea-surface-wind-speed-and-direction; http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/QSCAT_LEVEL_2B_OWV_COMP_12?ids=Collections&values=QUIKSCAT
Here is an example of QuikSCAT data, from RemSS above:
There is also ASCAT: http://www.remss.com/missions/ascat
and there is other microwave radiometer data, e.g. the Global Blended Sea Winds data: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/marineocean-data/blended-global/blended-sea-winds http://www.remss.com/measurements/wind/wspd-1-deg-product
For land data, try the Global Offline Land-surface Data-set: http://www.iges.org/gold/
Some countries have their own land surface wind data, e.g. for Australia, see: CSIRO Near-Surface Wind Speed data: https://data.csiro.au/dap/landingpage?execution=e1s2&_eventId=viewDescription, and BOM Average wind velocity maps: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climate_averages/wind-velocity/index.jsp
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Another addition to the very detailed and rich post above is to NOAAs Eart System Research Laboratory which provided me with the data I ended up using. NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Monthly Means and Other Derived Variables. It contains Daily and Monthly Values from 1948/01 until present, and can be vectorized quickly in ArcGIS Desktop.– anehCommented May 12, 2015 at 8:38
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Nice find -- the files have an extension '.nc' -- what opens that?– IanSCommented May 13, 2015 at 9:36
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It can be read directly into ArcGIS. How to Import Gridded Data in NetCDF Format into ArcGIS– anehCommented Jun 9, 2015 at 8:39
For Global Wind data I would recommend the Global Wind Atlas by the World Bank Group. The tool contains data on wind speed, capacity factor and much more all in GIS format and free of charge.
