The North Sea has up to 40 GW of planned offshore wind energy generating capacity (Fig. 1;
www.offshore-windenergie.net; Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie). Therefore the wind climatology of the region is of great importance to resource assessment, and maintenance needs. The OWEA Loads project (https://www.uni-oldenburg.de/en/physics/research/we-sys/research/owea-loads/), managed by many partners across academic institutions and industry, has the objective of assessing the lifetime stresses and loads on current and future generation turbines.
The role of the Uni. Tübingen within the framework of the project, is to provide direct measurements of the atmospheric boundary layer, as close to the Alpha Ventus site as possible (Fig. 2), up to 500 m above sea level. The fieldwork was accomplished over 5 two-week campaigns, using our MASC UAV (link to page?). Requirements for UAV deployment are launch and landing sites, and line of site at all times is legally required during flight. Therefore a coastline was required; Helgoland (Fig. 3) was ideally positioned.