Average monthly wind velocity
These maps show the average monthly wind velocity distribution across Australia.
Product code: IDCJCM0047
What do the maps show?
These maps show the average wind speed over Australia. They have been generated from the Bureau of Meteorology's Atmospheric high-resolution Regional Reanalysis for Australia (BARRA), version 2.
From a large-scale perspective, wind direction and wind speed are produced by the rotation of the earth and large scale pressure differences. On a broad scale, Australia is dominated by westerlies in southern parts of the continent and easterlies (trade winds) in the northern parts. Seasonal variation in surface wind fields are due to movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the Subtropical Ridge (STR). During the southern hemisphere winter, when the sub tropical ridge is located further equatorward, a greater extent of the Australian continent is subject to westerly winds than in summer.
On regional and local scales wind speed is affected by terrain, vegetation and meteorological factors such as the monsoon regime regime, tropical cyclones, sea/mountain breezes, frontal systems and convective activity. The BARRA model represents the atmosphere with a grid comprised of cells approximately 12 km wide, so effects at local scales below this size will not be fully resolved.
Values shown are averages calculated for all hours of the given month, using data for the thirty-year period 1991 to 2020.
Metadata
| TITLE: | Average monthly surface wind velocity data |
| DESCRIPTION: | Average monthly wind speed and direction across the Australian region in the form of a two-dimensional array. The mean data are based on the period 1991 to 2020. |
| CUSTODIAN: | Bureau of Meteorology |
| GEOGRAPHIC EXTENT NAMES(s): | Australia |
| AVAILABLE FORMAT TYPE(S): | ASCII row major, Arc/InfoTM grid export(.e00), Shapefiles. |
| SCALE/RESOLUTION | The resolution of the data is 0.125 degrees (approximately 12.5 km) |
Unless otherwise noted, all maps, graphs and diagrams in this page are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
