South Red Sea Wind Maps

by Robert Van Buskirk, Prof. Karina Garbesi, & Karen Rosen

Summer Maps Description Winter Maps

Average Annual Wind Speed

Winter (October to April) Winds

Average Speed (For different times of day)
00:00 to 06:00 06:00 to 12:00 12:00 to 18:00 18:00 to 24:00
Mean Direction (For different times of day)
00:00 to 06:00 06:00 to 12:00 12:00 to 18:00 18:00 to 24:00

Summer (May to September) Winds

Average Speed (For different times of day)
00:00 to 06:00 06:00 to 12:00 12:00 to 18:00 18:00 to 24:00
Mean Direction (For different times of day)
00:00 to 06:00 06:00 to 12:00 12:00 to 18:00 18:00 to 24:00

Technical Description

Here we provide fairly complete maps of the the wind speed and wind direction for the South Red Sea for the two major wind seasons: Winter (October to April) and Summer (May to September).

These maps were derived from the Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The copy of the data set that we use was purchased by the Environmental Studies Department of San Jose State University as part of its cooperation with the Eritrean Department of Energy in Wind Energy Development. The maps were produced by taking variable-scale guassian-weighted averaging of the COADS data.

The formulas for the averaging used to produce these maps is provided in the document wndann.html. We put the data into eight separate bins for averaging depending of the season of the year and time of day. The day is split into four periods, midnight to 6 AM, 6 AM to Noon, Noon to 6 PM, and 6 PM to midnight. (All times are local).

We also split the data into a winter season and summer season. We find that the winds are very similar within these two seasons. that is monthly means speeds do not vary much from May to September, nor do they vary much between October through April. But winds are very different in the two different seasons.

To calculate the average wind direction, we took the vector average wind speed, and chose the direction of the resulting vector as the predominant wind direction. In most cases this should produce only minor differences with more traditional wind direction averages which take the vector average of a unit wind vector in order to calculate the mean wind direction.


This information has been prepared by Robert Van Buskirk with generous collaboration and assistance from Prof. Karina Garbesi, and Karen Rosen. If you have any questions regarding some of this research please feel free to email me at robert@punchdown.org

I enjoy both visiting and working in Eritrea, and am available for both short term consultations and technical training seminars.

Contact Info:

Robert Van Buskirk
3217 College Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94705
U.S.A.
tel: 510-596-8869 (h)
email: robert@punchdown.org

Last update by rvb October 13, 1998.