New Squall Wind Criteria for the Gulf of Mexico

摘要

This paper presents new squall wind criteria for the Gulf of Mexico. Squalls are responsible for suddenrnrapid increases in wind speed and changes in wind direction, which can have a major impact upon vesselsrnand offshore structures. These need to be quantified for operability assessments and structural design.rnExtreme squall wind gusts are estimated from many years of measured hourly maximum wind gusts, fromrnthe Continuous Winds dataset of the US National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) archive. Quality control wasrnrequired to remove some anomalous high gust values. The new analysis supports key findings from arnpreliminary analysis first published in 2014, with a considerable reduction in uncertainty. The newrn10-year return period estimates of squall winds (5 second gust at 10m elevation) are approximately 32 m/s.rnThese exceed the corresponding value specified for a winter storm within API 2MET (27.7m/s). This hasrnpotential implications for operating criteria in the Gulf of Mexico.