Extreme-value time-series analysis of Australian Region A gust wind speeds to examine instrument bias

Australian building codes through the Australia/New Zealand Wind Actions Standard as well as the wind engineering community in general rely to a significant extent on the peak gust wind speed observations collected over more than 70 years by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). In the mid-1980's BoM commenced a program to replace the aging pressure tube Dines anemometers with cup anemometers. During the replacement procedure, many localities had more than one type of anemometer operating, recording extreme events. Systematic differences between instrument measurements during this overlap period raised serious concerns about the utility of the peak gust wind speed database. This paper presents the results of a reanalysis of the current BoM peak wind gust database for the non-cyclonic region (Region A) of the Australia/New Zealand Wind Actions Standard. The study utilises extreme value distribution analysis and compares estimates of the 500-year return-period (RP) peak gust wind exceedance level derived from segments of the record measured with the Dines and replacement anemometers. Results indicate that the later period appears to have a significant reduction in extreme events; 17 of 31 sites have a mean 500 year RP exceedance level for the replacement anemometer section of the record below the lower 95% confidence limit for the Dines anemometer part of the record. The 3PM mean wind speed time-series observations have also been examined, and they exhibit a similar trend.