Observation analysis of wind climate in China for 1971–2017 under the demand of wind energy evaluation and utilization

Abstract To meet the requirement of the wind energy resource assessment and utilization, the statistical characteristics of wind climate in the China mainland were analyzed in this study by using observation wind dataset for 1971–2017 from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA). A series of key factors closely related to wind power development were analyzed, systematically including the spatial and temporal characteristic of wind speed, the distribution of wind speed at different density grades, the density of the cumulative distribution, strong wind days and weak wind days. The characteristics of wind patterns in different regions are also compares. Results indicate that: (1) the regions with the highest wind speed in China centrally locate in Northwest China, North China and Northeast China with the highest wind speed occurs in spring. The annual variation of wind speed in northern China is bimodal while in southern China it is unimodal. (2) The wind speed probability density distribution shows a significant spatial–temporal difference. The wind speed probability distribution is the most concentrated in spring for almost all regions. For each season, the concentrated and stable wind speed occurs in Xinjiang region in spring. While it appears in the region from Northwest China to the northern part of North China for summer and autumn, and in the southern part of North China and Central China for winter. In the case of equal cumulative probability, the highest wind speed locates in Northeast China and the lowest in Sichuan Basin. (3) For 1971–2017, the wind speed in all regions of China showed a decreasing trend on the whole. But this trend slowed down since 1990s. It is​ worth noting that the wind speed in some regions even increased since 2000. (4) The numbers of strong wind day have been decreasing in all regions, but the numbers of weak wind day demonstrate an evolutionary feature of a growth followed by decrease. In most regions, the numbers of weak wind day reached the maximum in the vicinity of 2000 and then decreased rapidly.