Analyzing wind speed and precipitation trends of Maltese Island waters within a 12 NM radius

Abstract

The aim of this project is to analyse precipitation and wind speed time-series trends over Maltese island waters within a 12NM radius and observe any significant trends for both parameters; this has never been undertaken before and thus represents a gap in the knowledge of the general Maltese climate. An enhanced knowledge of the Maltese Island climate over water would be beneficial in expanding and bettering our general understanding of the Maltese climate. Two different satellite datasets are used to extract the necessary data required to produce the time-series trends, with the data for the total precipitation dataset (GPM: Monthly Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) v6) ranging from 2000- 2021, and the data for the 10m wind speed (NOAA AVHRR Pathfinder Version 5.3 Collated Global 4km Sea Surface Temperature) ranging from 1981-2022. The data from these two datasets were extracted using the Google Earth Engine Code Editor, while SAGA GIS was used to extract the basic raster statistics that were needed to produce the time-series graphs. The results obtained from this study could be of use in future research regarding offshore wind farms, as well as offshore rainwater collection systems, which would tackle 2 major problems that Malta is facing from a meteorological point of view, being the decrease in the supply of freshwater and rain in general over the Maltese Islands, and our over-reliance on non-renewable sources of energy.