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Abstract
Abstract. Near-surface winds affect many processes on planet Earth, ranging from fundamental biological mechanisms such as pollination to man-made infrastructure that is designed to resist or harness wind. The observed systematic wind speed decline up to around 2010 (stilling) and its subsequent recovery have therefore attracted much attention. While this sequence of downward and upwards trends and good connections to well-established modes of climate variability suggest that stilling could be a manifestation of multidecadal climate variability, a systematic investigation is currently lacking. Here, we use the Max Planck Institute Grand Ensemble (MPI-GE) to decompose internal variability from forced changes in wind speeds. We report that wind speed changes resembling observed stilling and its recovery are well in line with internal climate variability, both under current and future climate conditions. Moreover, internal climate variability outweighs forced changes in wind speeds on 20-year timescales by 1 order of magnitude, despite the fact that smaller, forced changes become relevant in the long run as they represent alterations of mean states. In this regard, we reveal that land use change plays a pivotal role in explaining MPI-GE ensemble-mean wind changes in the representative concentration pathways 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5. Our results demonstrate that multidecadal wind speed variability is of greater relevance than forced changes over the 21st century, in particular for wind-related infrastructure like wind energy.
Highlights
According to station observations, near-surface wind speeds declined between approximately 1980 and 2010, often referred to as stilling (Vautard et al, 2010)
We will use the MPI Grand Ensemble (MPI-GE) to quantify the likelihood of stilling-like phases under past, present, and future climate conditions and disentangle the effect of land use changes from those changes that are caused by elevated greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations
Analyzing trend probability density functions (PDFs) of individual models, we find that a large subset agrees remarkably well with the amplitudes reported by Max Planck Institute Grand Ensemble (MPI-GE), while some models feature lower trend magnitudes
Summary
Near-surface wind speeds declined between approximately 1980 and 2010, often referred to as stilling (Vautard et al, 2010). After trend removal, current centennial reanalyses consistently report multidecadal changes in German wind energy potentials that favor the interpretation of stilling as a phase in longer-term climate variability (Wohland et al, 2019b). Global climate models allow us to complement observation-based and reanalysis-based assessments and can be used to evaluate internal variability versus forced changes under past and future climatic conditions. We will use the MPI Grand Ensemble (MPI-GE) to quantify the likelihood of stilling-like phases under past, present, and future climate conditions and disentangle the effect of land use changes from those changes that are caused by elevated greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.
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