Characterization of Wind Meandering in Low-Wind-Speed Conditions

Investigation of low-wind cases observed during the Urban Turbulent Project campaign (Torino, Italy) and at the Santa Maria meteorological station (Santa Maria, Brazil) provides insight into the wind-meandering phenomenon, i.e. large, non-turbulent oscillations of horizontal wind speed and temperature. Meandering and non-meandering cases are identified through analysis of the Eulerian autocorrelation functions of the horizontal wind-velocity components and temperature. When all three autocorrelation functions oscillate, meandering is present. As with weak turbulence, meandering shows no dependence on stability but is influenced by presence of buildings and depends on wind speed. We show that, while the standard deviation of the horizontal velocity is always large in low-wind conditions, the standard deviation of the vertical velocity shows very different behaviour in meandering and non-meandering conditions. In particular, the value of the ratio of the standard deviations of the vertical and horizontal velocities typifies the meandering condition.