Wavelet detection of coherent structures in wind fields

In this paper, we seek evidence of sustained changes in wind speed that are not explained by incoherent variability. Wavelets provide an excellent tool for the detection of coherent structures in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, in signals with a highly stochastic nature, the wavelet transform often replaces a complicated one-dimensional signal representation with an even more complex two-dimensional representation. To account for this, we introduce a statistical technique through the development of a randomized reference distribution that allows us to separate coherent structures from the variability of the transform due to incoherent noise alone.