A comparative study of field measurements of the turbulence characteristics of typhoon and hurricane winds

Tropical cyclones are referred to as typhoons and hurricanes in the South China Sea/North Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean, respectively. As the genesis of these storms results from different basins and latitudes, the wind field characteristics may differ in these storms and differ with the recommendations in current wind codes, which are mainly based on extratropical winds. In order to delineate any differences, based on wind data measured at fixed/deployable towers in four typhoons and three hurricanes, turbulent wind characteristics, e.g., turbulence ratio and intensity, integral scale, gust factor, peak factor, skewness and kurtosis, were comparatively investigated and compared with the recommendations in ASCE7-10. In this comparison, the influences of roughness length and mean wind speed on the turbulent wind characteristics were also examined.