Digital Commons Network^™

Winds Of Change?: Projections Of Near-Surface Winds Under Climate Change Scenarios, S C. Pryor, Justin T. Schoof, R J. Barthelmie

Publications

Changes in near–surface wind speeds due to global climate change may have profound geophysical and societal impacts. However, Global Climate Models (GCMs) are unable to replicate the historically observed magnitude and spatial variability of wind speeds, so we apply a downscaling technique to generate probability distributions of wind speeds at sites in northern Europe for historical periods (1961–1990 and 1982–2000) and two future periods (2046–2065, 2081–2100). Projections for the twenty-first century (C21st) indicate no evidence of substantial evolution relative to the end of the twentieth century (C20th), although there is increased divergence of results from downscaling of different GCMs toward …