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ERA5 Data - How is a wind gust defined?

I'm working with wind data, that I buy from a company, which delivers basically reformatted ERA5 weather data from ECMWF (https://www.ecmwf.int/). Their historic wind data includes "Wind gusts (sfc)" (m/s) and I cannot find out how this "Wind gust" is defined.

My understanding is that a wind gust is basically just the maximum value of wind velocity of a number of averages within an observation period. Say I measure wind velocity as average over 1 hour, then look at the 10-minute averages of that same 1 hour and the largest of those is my "Wind gust" (V_600_3600 - see here for nomenclature:http://ijsetr.com/uploads/621345IJSETR1044-354.pdf).

But the ERA data are a re-analysis so of course the gust is basically just a factor on top of the average 1hour wind. What I cannot figure out, is, which gust definition this uses. Is it 10-min (V_600_3600) or 1-min (V_60_3600) or even 3-seconds (V_3_3600).

The support of my data-company insists that "Wind gust" is "the maximum wind velocity within an hour" (they deliver hourly data over long time periods - years) but they insist that this "Wind gust"-value cannot be defined in terms of a particular averaging-time period like 10-minute gust or similar.

我单词查找树d to find the wind gust definition for ERA5 - the only thing I found is this definition here, that defines the "Instantaneous 10m wind gust" as being equal to the 3s wind gust (V_3_3600):https://eqc-cms.predictia.es/pub/qar/reanalysis-1412/pdf

Is this the correct definition? I'm a bit confused, since this contradicts the company support guys (which are specialist for this thing). They insist, there is not time-averaging-period attached to the definition of "Wind gust" which is, in my understanding, not sensible. Theremustbe some time information attached to any definition of "wind gust" as far as I understand? But then again I'm not a meteorologist and might miss something basic.

Obliged for any help to clarify this respectively lets me understand this better.

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  • $\begingroup$ Great information much obliged! The IFS documentation in particular is a treasure trove of information. I've been not looking for gusts, but also roughness definitions, zero-level height adjustments etc. and its all in there! Thanks a bunch! $\endgroup$ Oct 22, 2022 at 16:57

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