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© 2016. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

We analyse the variability of the probability distribution of daily wind speed in wintertime over Northern and Central Europe in a series of global and regional climate simulations covering the last centuries, and in reanalysis products covering approximately the last 60 years. The focus of the study lies on identifying the link of the variations in the wind speed distribution to the regional near-surface temperature, to the meridional temperature gradient and to the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Our main result is that the link between the daily wind distribution and the regional climate drivers is strongly model dependent. The global models tend to behave similarly, although they show some discrepancies. The two regional models also tend to behave similarly to each other, but surprisingly the results derived from each regional model strongly deviates from the results derived from its driving global model. In addition, considering multi-centennial timescales, we find in two global simulations a long-term tendency for the probability distribution of daily wind speed to widen through the last centuries. The cause for this widening is likely the effect of the deforestation prescribed in these simulations.

We conclude that no clear systematic relationship between the mean temperature, the temperature gradient and/or the North Atlantic Oscillation, with the daily wind speed statistics can be inferred from these simulations. The understanding of past and future changes in the distribution of wind speeds, and thus of wind speed extremes, will require a detailed analysis of the representation of the interaction between large-scale and small-scale dynamics.

Details

Title
Variability of daily winter wind speed distribution over Northern Europe during the past millennium in regional and global climate simulations
Author
Bierstedt, Svenja E 1 ; Hünicke, Birgit 1 ; Zorita, Eduardo 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Wagner, Sebastian 1 ; Gómez-Navarro, Juan José 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Institute of Coastal Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Geesthacht, Germany 
 Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland 
Pages
317-338
Publication year
2016
Publication date
2016
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
ISSN
18149324
e-ISSN
18149332
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2414156942
Copyright
© 2016. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.