energies Article Wind Climate and Wind Power Resource Assessment Based on Gridded Scatterometer Data: A Thracian Sea Case Study Nikolaos Kokkos 1 , Maria Zoidou 1, Konstantinos Zachopoulos 1, Meysam Majidi Nezhad 2, Davide Astiaso Garcia 3 and Georgios Sylaios 1,* 1 Laboratory of Ecological Engineering and Technology, Department of Environmental Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, 67100 Xanthi, Greece;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +30-25410-79398 Abstract: The present analysis utilized the 6-hourly data of wind speed (zonal and meridional) for the period between 2011 and 2019, as retrieved from the Copernicus Marine Environmental Service (CMEMS), covering the Thracian Sea (the northern part of the Aegean Sea). Data were estimated from the global wind fields derived from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) L2b scatterometer on-board Meteorological Operational (METOP) satellites, and then processed towards the equivalent neutral-stability 10 m winds with a spatial resolution of 0.25◦ × 0.25◦. The analysis involved: (a) descriptive statistics on wind speed and direction data; (b) frequency distributions of daily-mean wind speeds per wind direction sector; (c) total wind energy content assessment per wind speed Citation: Kokkos, N.; Zoidou, M.; increment and per sector; (d) total annual wind energy production (in MWh/yr); and (e) wind Zachopoulos, K.; Nezhad, M.M.; power density, probability density function, and Weibull wind speed distribution, together with the Garcia, D.A.; Sylaios, G.