Observed and simulated trends of daily peak wind gusts across northern Europe

Abstract

Extreme wind hazards have a substantial societal and environmental impact. Due to their complex origins, there are great knowledge gaps about their variations and the associated mechanisms, which makes the prediction challenging. Specifically there is a urgent need to evaluate numerical models’ capability in simulate extreme wind conditions. This study focuses on assessing variabilities and trends of Daily Peak Wind Gust (DPWG) and its extreme (defined as 90th percentile) cross Northern Europe, based on observation during 1996-2016 and Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations for 1970-2016. The aim is to evaluate RCMs’ ability in simulating past changes of the DPWG and its extreme as reflected in the observations. RCMs are the key tools available for the prediction of wind conditions. An improved understanding about how these models perform can help identify eventual deficiencies in the models, which may enhance our prediction ability.