Impact of Surface Roughness Changes on Surface Wind Speed  over Western Europe: A Study with a Regional Climate Model            

Abstract

The temporal trend of wind speed near the surface over land has been investigated over recent decades. A prevailing trend of decline was found in several studies for most areas in the Northern hemisphere, denoted as terrestrial stilling, with multiple causes being discussed. In this study, we focus on the impact of changes of surface roughness due to changes in land-use and vegetation cover on this variable for western Europe using the regional climate model RACMO driven by ERA5 reanalysis. We conduct two simulations at climate scale, with and without changes in land-use and vegetation on a yearly basis. We find that upper level large-scale circulation slowing down results in declining near surface mean wind speed, and that increases in surface roughness due to changes in land use and vegetation cover play an important role in intensifying this declining trend from our simulations with RACMO. However, the trends inferred from the model simulations and ERA5 are not consistent with trends derived from gridded observations database E-OBS. This could come from the complexity of integrating in-situ measurements with uncorrectable inhomogeneity to derive E-OBS.

A collaborative hackathon to investigate climate change and extreme weather impacts in justice and insurance settings

“…• How is this influenced by climate model, land use and exposure dataset choices? (Luu et al, 2023).…”

“…Results of further study on the relative roles of hazard versus exposure uncertainty are intended to be published, aiming to answer the important remaining research questions: How does climate change impact the largest European windstorms and their associated risk to society based on changes in hazard and exposure? How is this influenced by climate model, land use and exposure dataset choices? (Luu et al ., 2023). …”

Effects of irrigation‐induced surface thermodynamics changes on wind speed in the Heihe River basin, Northwest China

“…Surface wind speed is essentially regulated by surface properties. For instance, global surface wind slowdown over the past few decades had been extensively attributed to increased surface roughness caused by land use changes and urbanization (Chen et al, 2020; Luu et al, 2023; Minola et al, 2022; Vautard et al, 2010; Wang et al, 2020). Actually, Mohammed et al (1999) and Han et al (2016) reported that irrigation could promote crop growth and also decrease surface wind speed through increasing surface friction.…”