ABSTRACT
The European Wind Atlas was produced with the purpose of establishing the meteorological basis for the assessment of the wind resources in the European Community. The Atlas depicts through maps and tables the regional distribution of the wind resources over land, and a recent study has complemented this by presenting an offshore wind resource map. A careful comparison between the Wind Atlas predictions and the ship statistics can be used to rank a number of near-coastal stations in the Wind Atlas. A careful comparison between the Wind Atlas predictions and the ship statistics could well lead to a subset of stations to be recommended and therefore it is the intention to do so. The distribution of the European wind resources over open water seems to be known to a sufficient degree of accuracy. The European Wind Atlas was published in 1989, but work has been carried out since then for improving the knowledge of the European wind climatology.
