High above ground level, at a height of about 1 kilometre, the wind is hardly influenced by the surface of the earth at all. In the lower layers of the atmosphere, however, wind speeds are affected by the friction against the surface of the earth. In the wind industry one distinguishes between the roughness of the terrain, the influence from obstacles , and the influence from the terrain contours, which is also called the orography of the area. We shall be dealing with orography, when we investigate so called speed up effects, i.e. tunnel effects and hill effects , later.
Roughness
In general, the more pronounced the roughness of the earth’s surface, the more the wind will be slowed down.
Forests and large cities obviously slow the wind down considerably, while concrete runways in airports will only slow the wind down a little. Water surfaces are even smoother than concrete runways, and will have even less influence on the wind, while long grass and shrubs and bushes will slow the wind down considerably.
In the wind industry, people usually refer to roughness classes or roughness lengths, when they evaluate wind conditions in a landscape. A high roughness class of 3 to 4 refers to landscapes with many trees and buildings, while a sea surface is in roughness class 0.
Concrete runways in airports are in roughness class 0.5. The same applies to the flat, open landscape to the left which has been grazed by sheep.
The proper definition of roughness classes and roughness lengths may be found in the Reference Manual. The term roughness length is really the distance above ground level where the wind speed theoretically should be zero.