Offshore wind climatology over the Mediterranean basin

To obtain the offshore wind climatology over the whole Mediterranean region, European Centre for Medium‐range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 6‐hourly wind data over a grid resolution of 0·5° × 0·5° for a period of 24 years have been retrieved. Data sets at 850 and 700 hPa pressure levels and 10 m above the surface were downloaded. For each grid point, mean wind speeds and Weibull probability density function parameters have been computed. As the wind field of ECMWF at 10 m is less accurate near the coast and in narrow basins, e.g. the Adriatic Sea, owing to the size of the mesh and land–sea mask smoothness, these statistics have been corrected, for each grid point, with the statistics produced using 2 year runs of a limited‐area model with a grid size of 10 km. Results have been compared with experimental data from buoys, islands and ships in various regions of the basin. Maps of mean wind speeds and Weibull parameters are shown here for the whole Mediterranean Sea to illustrate these results.