Jakob Mann is professor and head of the Meteorology and Remote Sensing section at DTU Wind. His core subjects in wind energy research are atmospheric turbulence, wind resources and remote sensing, especially Doppler lidars. He is Editor-in-Chief and founder of Wind Energy Science, a journal owned by the wind energy research community through the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE). He is affiliate scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder Colorado. The favorite part of his job is to supervise PhD students.

For a long time, wind turbines have been designed with external conditions given by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards on the subject. These include a description of the atmospheric inflow to the rotor, which is one of the main drivers of dynamic loads on the structure. The models in the standard are based on atmospheric measurements at 70 m or lower, but modern wind turbines being the largest man-made rotating structure, now exceed 250 m and are only expected to grow in size. Several recent experiments, especially off-shore and mostly based on measurements made by Doppler lidars, shed new light on inflow turbulence. We show how the old models have deficiencies when reaching larger heights in the atmosphere, both over the ocean and over land and look at the consequences for loads on wind turbines.