Time Step

In Windographer we use the term 'time step' to mean either:

An interval of time in which one or more measurements are made, or
In a dataset consisting of many time steps of the same size, the length of time covered by each time step.

If we were to represent a dataset as a table of data, with one row for each time step and one column for each data column, then a time step would correspond to one row of that table, as highlighted in the example below:

Start Time	Speed 75m	Direction 72m
Start Time	(m/s)	(°)
2021-02-12 05:40	8.10	287
2021-02-12 05:50	8.14	268
2021-02-12 06:00	7.53	250
2021-02-12 06:10	7.45	236
2021-02-12 06:20	6.49	232
2021-02-12 06:30	5.43	225
2021-02-12 06:40	4.81	222
2021-02-12 06:50	4.57	225
2021-02-12 07:00	4.84	223
2021-02-12 07:10	4.65	219
2021-02-12 07:20	4.65	218
2021-02-12 07:30	4.98	217
2021-02-12 07:40	5.24	227
2021-02-12 07:50	5.62	264

Using the second meaning of the term, we might say that the above dataset "has a time step of 10 minutes".

Windographer requires datasets to have regular, consistent time steps, meaning the time step cannot change at any point in the period of record. If you import a data file containing data at irregular intervals, Windographer will combine or subdivide those intervals as necessary to achieve regular time steps.