Extreme wind regime responses to climate variability and change in the inner south coast of British Columbia, Canada

Abeysirigunawardena, Dilumie; Gilleland, Eric; Bronaugh, D.; Wong, Pat

doi:10.3137/ao1003.2009

Cited by 22 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The PNW experiences decreased gustiness during winter months in warm phase years, but fewer stations exhibit significant changes and the changes are smaller in magnitude. Similarly, Abeysirigunawardena et al [2009] also found a significant relationship between extreme winds and ENSO, with extreme wind events occurring more frequently in Delta, B.C. during cold (i.e., La Niña) phases over the past 53 years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Our finding of a mainland declining trend of 0.3-0.5% per year is close to this range and agrees with the continental results. Links between declining wind speeds and warm El-Niño phases [Abeysirigunawardena et al, 2009;St. George and Wolfe, 2009] would not explain this steady, long-term trend occurring since 1950 for mainland stations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[3] Several studies have examined changes in wind speeds in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and North America, but these studies come to differing conclusions regarding the trends and relationships to climate parameters with results appearing to depend on the type and amount of data used for analysis [Abeysirigunawardena et al, 2009;Enloe et al, 2004;Gower, 2002;Klink, 1999Klink, , 2002Pryor et al, 2009;Pryor and Ledolter, 2010;Tuller, 2004;Wan et al 2010]. Further, few studies have tried to conduct a comprehensive investigation examining all available observed wind speed data for a particular area.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Importance of location for describing typical and extreme wind speed behavior

Griffin

Kohfeld

Cooper

et al. 2010

Geophysical Research Letters

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[1] Several recent studies have considered the potential impact of climate change on regional wind intensity. However, previous wind speed studies in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) present conflicting results for wind speed trends in relation to climate drivers. This study analyzes the percentiles (50th, 75th, and 95th) of the strongly positively skewed distributions for PNW maximum daily wind speeds from 92 meteorological stations, and reveals different behaviors for average and extreme wind speeds. Considerably stronger winds are found at coastal locations compared with sites further inland. Extreme wind speeds at these coastal locations appear to follow an eight to nine-year cyclic pattern, while mainland sites have a small, linear downward wind speed trend. This finding of a behavioral dependence on location helps reconcile previous, apparently contradictory results and has important global implications for wind research and infrastructure planning, such as wind energy feasibility studies and air quality management activities. Citation: Griffin, B. J., K. E. Kohfeld, A. B. Cooper, and G. Boenisch (2010), Importance of location for describing typical and extreme wind speed behavior, Geophys.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Importance of location for describing typical and extreme wind speed behavior

Griffin

Kohfeld

Cooper

et al. 2010

Geophysical Research Letters

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“…Selected stations in BC were included in the downscaling studies of Sloughter et al (2010) and Thorarinsdottir and Gneiting (2010), which focused on short-range forecasting of wind speed over the Pacific Northwest. Extreme wind recurrence frequency at three stations in southern BC was analyzed in the context of larger-scale climate variability by Abeysirigunawardena et al (2009). Wind speed trends in recent decades at selected meteorological stations in the region were examined by Tuller (2004), while the behaviour of past and future GCM-modelled marine winds off BC was addressed by Merryfield et al (2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical downscaling of historical monthly mean winds over a coastal region of complex terrain. I. Predicting wind speed

2011

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Surface wind speed is a key climatic variable of interest in many applications, including assessments of storm-related infrastructure damage and feasibility studies of wind power generation. In this work and a companion paper (van der Kamp et al. 2011), the relationship between local surface wind and large-scale climate variables was studied using multiple regression analysis. The analysis was performed using monthly mean station data from British Columbia, Canada and large-scale climate variables (predictors) from the NCEP-2 reanalysis over the period 1979-2006. Two regression-based methodologies were compared. The first relates the annual cycle of station wind speed to that of the large-scale predictors at the closest grid box to the station. It is shown that the relatively high correlation coefficients obtained with this method are attributable to the dominant influence of region-wide seasonality, and thus contain minimal information about local wind behaviour at the stations. The second method uses interannually varying data for individual months, aggregated into seasons, and is demonstrated to contain intrinsically local information about the surface winds. The dependence of local wind speed upon large-scale predictors over a much larger region surrounding the station was also explored, resulting in 2D maps of spatial correlations. The cross-validated explained variance using the interannual method was highest in autumn and winter, ranging from 30 to 70% at about a dozen stations in the region. Reasons for the limited predictive skill of the regressions and directions for future progress are reviewed.

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“…The PNA pattern is a dominant mode of atmospheric variability over North America and strongly influenced by the ENSO phase (positive phase associated with an El Niño episode), and has been observed at time scales ranging from days to decades [35][36][37]. As with the PDO, positive (negative) phases of the PNA produce cooler (warmer) and drier (wetter) conditions in the Great Lakes region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of Low Frequency Variability on Climate and Carbon Fluxes in a Temperate Pine Forest in Eastern Canada

Thorne

Arain

2015

Forests

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Carbon, water and energy exchanges between forests and the atmosphere depend upon seasonal dynamics of both temperature and precipitation, which are influenced by low frequency climate oscillations such as: El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Arctic Oscillation (AO), Eastern Pacific Oscillation (EPO) and the Pacific-North American (PNA). This study investigated the influence of climate oscillations on the local climate and carbon fluxes in a 75-year old temperate pine (Pinus strobus L.) forest, near Lake Erie in southern Ontario, Canada. Analyses indicated mean winter temperatures were correlated to NAO, AO and EPO, total winter precipitation was influenced by PNA and AO, while total snowfall was correlated with PNA and ENSO. These impacts influenced carbon dynamics of the forest during the winter and spring seasons. The EPO had a significant inverse correlation with winter and spring carbon fluxes, while the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) was significantly correlated with winter respiration. In 2012, an extreme warm event linked to climate oscillations raised temperatures and resulted in a large release of carbon from the forest due to higher ecosystem respiration. As low frequency climate oscillations are important drivers of extreme weather events, affecting their intensity, frequency and spatial patterns, they can cause large changes in carbon exchanges in forest ecosystems in the northeastern parts of North America. OPEN ACCESSForests 2015, 6 2763

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Extreme wind regime responses to climate variability and change in the inner south coast of British Columbia, Canada

Cited by 22 publications

References 42 publications

Importance of location for describing typical and extreme wind speed behavior

Importance of location for describing typical and extreme wind speed behavior

Statistical downscaling of historical monthly mean winds over a coastal region of complex terrain. I. Predicting wind speed

Influence of Low Frequency Variability on Climate and Carbon Fluxes in a Temperate Pine Forest in Eastern Canada

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