The Impact of Climate Change on Winter Storm Damage in Europe

• Main Author: Severino, Luca
• Other Authors: Fairless, Christopher, Gerstman Afargan, Hilla, De Vries, Andries-Jan, Domeisen, Daniela, Bresch, David N.
• Language: English
• Published: ETH Zurich 2022
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/602093; https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000602093

Windstorms induced by extratropical cyclones in winter (winter storms) are one of the most destructive weather phenomena impacting Europe, and lead to significant economical losses and fatalities. Changes in both the storm track and individual storms are expected as climate changes. Understanding future changes in winter storm activity is thus key for risk assessment and damage mitigation in Europe. This thesis combines state-of-the-art climatic projections from 29 General Circulation Models (GCMs) participating in the 6th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), with the open-source weather and climate risk assessment model CLIMADA to obtain a set of relevant projections for future winter-storm-induced damages over Europe. More specifically, we study the uncertainties, spatial patterns, and atmospheric factors of influence of future projected windstorm damages occurring during the winter half-year (October-March: ONDJFM). We use an ANOVA model to partition the uncertainty in the projections of the damages into four different sources: the climate model, the stochastic, the emission scenario, and the impact function uncertainty. We find that the climate model uncertainty dominates the uncertainty in the projections of damages related to frequent events, but that the stochastic uncertainty dominates for damages related to extreme events, highlighting the need for improvements in climate models and an increased number of ensemble members. Spatial patterns of the future changes in winter storm damages projected by the multi-model ensemble show a median increase in the damages in a narrow band covering parts of the British Isles, northern mainland Europe, southern Scandinavia and the Baltic states, and a median decrease in the rest of the European domain, in agreement with an eastward extension of the North Atlantic storm track into Europe. The large variability in the projected changes of extreme surface winds between GCMs suggests that projected storm damages cannot be explained exclusively by ...