SEASONALITY COMPARISON BETWEEN SIMULATED AND MEASURED WIND FIELD: CASE STUDY OF TUNISIAN ARID AREAS

The absence of pre-established input meteorological database is one of constraint to apply modeling tools to simulate the desert emissions on a continental scale. Different meteorological models are used to provide the surface wind fields. The purpose of this work is the simulation at finer spatial and temporal scales, from a meteorological model "Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS)", the surface wind speed in Tunisian arid zones. To evaluate the consistency of wind field simulated by RAMS in southern Tunisia, we compared the wind speeds at 10 meters simulated by RAMS and measured by 2 meteorological stations located in the study area which are Djerba (costal station) and Tozeur (inland). A very good correlation between measured and calculated wind fields was found. In addition, a very good agreement is observed, in particular with respect the seasonality of wind speeds, with a maximum recorded in spring and a minimum marked in summer.