The 21st century decline in damaging European windstorms
A decline in damaging European windstorms has led to a reduction in insured losses in the 21st century. This decline is explored by identifying a damaging windstorm characteristic and investigating how and why this characteristic has changed in recent years. This novel exploration is based on 6103 h...
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ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:nhess50689 2023-05-15T17:34:55+02:00 The 21st century decline in damaging European windstorms Dawkins, Laura C. Stephenson, David B. Lockwood, Julia F. Maisey, Paul E. 2018-09-27 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-1999-2016 https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/16/1999/2016/ eng eng doi:10.5194/nhess-16-1999-2016 https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/16/1999/2016/ eISSN: 1684-9981 Text 2018 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-1999-2016 2020-07-20T16:24:01Z A decline in damaging European windstorms has led to a reduction in insured losses in the 21st century. This decline is explored by identifying a damaging windstorm characteristic and investigating how and why this characteristic has changed in recent years. This novel exploration is based on 6103 high-resolution model-generated historical footprints (1979–2014), representing the whole European domain. The footprint of a windstorm is defined as the maximum wind gust speed to occur at a set of spatial locations over the duration of the storm. The area of the footprint exceeding 20 ms −1 over land, A 20 , is shown to be a good predictor of windstorm damage. This damaging characteristic has decreased in the 21st century, due to a statistically significant decrease in the relative frequency of windstorms exceeding 20 ms −1 in north-western Europe, although an increase is observed in southern Europe. This is explained by a decrease in the quantiles of the footprint wind gust speed distribution above approximately 18 ms −1 at locations in this region. In addition, an increased variability in the number of windstorm events is observed in the 21st century. Much of the change in A 20 is explained by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The correlation between winter total A 20 and winter-averaged mean sea-level pressure resembles the NAO pattern, shifted eastwards over Europe, and a strong positive relationship (correlation of 0.715) exists between winter total A 20 and winter-averaged NAO. The shifted correlation pattern, however, suggests that other modes of variability may also play a role in the variation in windstorm losses. Text North Atlantic North Atlantic oscillation Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 16 8 1999 2007 |
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Copernicus Publications: E-Journals |
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English |
description |
A decline in damaging European windstorms has led to a reduction in insured losses in the 21st century. This decline is explored by identifying a damaging windstorm characteristic and investigating how and why this characteristic has changed in recent years. This novel exploration is based on 6103 high-resolution model-generated historical footprints (1979–2014), representing the whole European domain. The footprint of a windstorm is defined as the maximum wind gust speed to occur at a set of spatial locations over the duration of the storm. The area of the footprint exceeding 20 ms −1 over land, A 20 , is shown to be a good predictor of windstorm damage. This damaging characteristic has decreased in the 21st century, due to a statistically significant decrease in the relative frequency of windstorms exceeding 20 ms −1 in north-western Europe, although an increase is observed in southern Europe. This is explained by a decrease in the quantiles of the footprint wind gust speed distribution above approximately 18 ms −1 at locations in this region. In addition, an increased variability in the number of windstorm events is observed in the 21st century. Much of the change in A 20 is explained by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The correlation between winter total A 20 and winter-averaged mean sea-level pressure resembles the NAO pattern, shifted eastwards over Europe, and a strong positive relationship (correlation of 0.715) exists between winter total A 20 and winter-averaged NAO. The shifted correlation pattern, however, suggests that other modes of variability may also play a role in the variation in windstorm losses. |
format |
Text |
author |
Dawkins, Laura C. Stephenson, David B. Lockwood, Julia F. Maisey, Paul E. |
spellingShingle |
Dawkins, Laura C. Stephenson, David B. Lockwood, Julia F. Maisey, Paul E. The 21st century decline in damaging European windstorms |
author_facet |
Dawkins, Laura C. Stephenson, David B. Lockwood, Julia F. Maisey, Paul E. |
author_sort |
Dawkins, Laura C. |
title |
The 21st century decline in damaging European windstorms |
title_short |
The 21st century decline in damaging European windstorms |
title_full |
The 21st century decline in damaging European windstorms |
title_fullStr |
The 21st century decline in damaging European windstorms |
title_full_unstemmed |
The 21st century decline in damaging European windstorms |
title_sort |
21st century decline in damaging european windstorms |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-1999-2016 https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/16/1999/2016/ |
genre |
North Atlantic North Atlantic oscillation |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic North Atlantic oscillation |
op_source |
eISSN: 1684-9981 |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/nhess-16-1999-2016 https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/16/1999/2016/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-1999-2016 |
container_title |
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences |
container_volume |
16 |
container_issue |
8 |
container_start_page |
1999 |
op_container_end_page |
2007 |
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1766133913440223232 |