A New Scheme for Daily Peak Wind Gust Prediction Using Machine Learning

A major challenge in meteorology is the forecasting of winds owing to their highly chaotic nature. However, wind forecasts, and in particular daily peak wind gust forecasts, provide the public with a general sense of the risks associated with wind on a given day and are useful in decision making. Additionally, such knowledge is critical for wind energy production. Currently, no operational daily peak wind gust product exists. As such, this project will seek to develop a peak wind gust prediction scheme based on output from an operational numerical weather prediction model. Output from the North American Mesoscale (NAM) model will be used in a support vector regression (SVR) algorithm trained to predict daily peak wind gusts for ten cities commonly impacted by hazardous wind gusts (cities in the Midwest and central Plains) and with interests in wind energy. Output from a kernel principal component analysis of the fully three-dimensional atmosphere as characterized by the NAM forecasts will be used to predict peak wind gusts for each location at 36 hours lead time. Ultimately, this initial product will lead to the development of a more robust prediction scheme that could one day transition into an operational forecast model.