Meteorology

16 February 2011 Aberdeen Branch Evening Meeting

Chairmain David Kaye, Aquamarine Power

Sponsored by Aerospace & Marine International, Amarcon and StormGeo

Report

Flyer

Overview

Meteorological conditions have a huge impact on the offshore industry, through all of the design, construction, operation and decommissioning phases of an offshore development. This evening meeting looked at some of the key principles of offshore meteorology, including extreme weather forecasting for design and short-term forecasting for construction and operations, the new meteorological issues facing the emerging renewable industry and the topical issue of climate change. The meeting closed with a presentation and demonstration of weather monitoring and decision support system to optimise offshore operations.

Presentations

Forecasting for Design and Operations

Keith Thomson, Aerospace & Marine International (AMI)

For offshore operations the presentation gave a brief outline of weather forecast providers and their relationship to users of the forecasts, before explaining how global numerical models operate and how they are initialised with observational data. For design criteria an explanation of how observations of wave height are averaged and processed was given.

Meteorology for Renewables

Hilde Holdhus and Alan Binley, StormGeo

The presentation focused on meteorology for the offshore renewables industry. Accurate meteorological data and forecasting is essential to determine the optimum location of renewable devices and the expected revenue. Renewable devices are generally located in the inshore region with different meteorological characteristics and less operational experience than the more conventional offshore industry locations. This presentation addressed the key aspects of meteorology for renewables, including offshore wind and marine renewable sectors.

Climate Change, Variability and Data Trends

Ian Leggett, OceanExpert Ltd

Climate change continues to be a source of public debate. The principles are well known, however the impact on the offshore industry is less understood, even within the industry itself. This presentation addressed temperature changes through time, key concerns and impacts of climate change, trends/changes, science and perception and natural variability, and trends in North Sea wave heights.

Monitoring and Decision Support System for Weather-Sensitive Operations

Leon Adegeest, Amarcon

Once you have the weather forecast available, what will be the impact of the weather on the vessel? And how can you optimise the performance in the expected weather?