Observation and analysis of etesian wind storms in the Saroniko Gulf

Abstract. The purpose of this work is to study the Etesian winds in the Saroniko Gulf to understand the complicate physical processes that generate the windstorms in the Saroniko Gulf. It is developed a study of the weather patterns characteristic of the Saroniko Gulf and a comparisons of the wind data measured on land by the station of Helliniko airport (years: 1990-2000) and at sea by a buoy (years: 2000-2002) during the month of August. It is presented a statistical model that shows, as a probability of occurrence, the variations of the wind speed in function of the variations of the wind direction. Finally the statistical model is compared with the RAMS limited area model during a test case in August 2004; the now-casting results obtained using these two different methods are compared to data measured by station of the automatic weather network of the HNMS.