Extreme wind climatology of Nepal and Northern India

Wind speed data from Nepal and adjoining countries have been analyzed to estimate an extreme wind speed climatology for the region. Previously wind speed information for Nepal was adopted from the Indian National Standard and applied to two orographically different regions: above and below 3000 m elevation respectively. Comparisons of the results of this analysis are made with relevant codes and standards. The study confirms that the assigned basic wind speed of 47 m/s for the plains and hills of Nepal (below 3000 m) is appropriate, however, data to substantiate a basic wind speed of 55 m/s above 3000 m is unavailable. Using a composite analysis of 15 geographically similar stations, the study also generated 435 years of annual maxima wind data and fitted them to Type I and Type III extreme value distributions. The results suggest that Type III distribution may better represent the data. The findings are also consistent with predictions made by Holmes and Weller (2002) and to a certain extent those of Sarkar et al. (2014), but lower than the analysis undertaken by Lakshmanan et al. (2009) for northern India. The study also highlights that the use of a load factor of 1.5 on wind load implies lower strength design MRI' s of around 260 years compared to the 700 years of ASCE 7-22.