Storminess over the North Atlantic and northwestern Europe—A review

Abstract

This review assesses storm studies over the North Atlantic and northwestern Europe regarding the occurrence of potential long‐term trends. Based on a systematic review of available articles, trends are classified according to different geographical regions, datasets, and time periods. Articles that used measurement and proxy data, reanalyses, regional and global climate model data on past and future trends are evaluated for changes in storm climate. The most important result is that trends in storm activity depend critically on the time period analysed. An increase in storm numbers is evident for the reanalyses period for the most recent decades, whereas most long‐term studies show merely decadal variability for the last 100–150 years. Storm trends derived from reanalyses data and climate model data for the past are mostly limited to the last four to six decades. The majority of these studies find increasing storm activity north of about 55–60° N over the North Atlantic with a negative tendency southward. This increase from about the 1970s until the mid‐1990s is also mirrored by long‐term proxies and the North Atlantic Oscillation and constitutes a part of their decadal variability. Studies based on proxy and measurement data or model studies over the North Atlantic for the past which cover more than 100 years show large decadal variations and either no trend or a decrease in storm numbers. Future scenarios until about the year 2100 indicate mostly an increase in winter storm intensity over the North Atlantic and western Europe. However, future trends in total storm numbers are quite heterogeneous and depend on the model generation used.

100 years of atmospheric and marine observations at the Finnish Utö Island in the Baltic Sea

“…We see increase until 1990 and after that a decrease until the end of our visual ( We also looked at wind time series (period 1959-2016) and found no significant changes in wind direction nor wind speed, in line with a recent study for the period 1979(Laapas and Venäläinen, 2017. However, because the wind observations are very sensitive to inhomogeneities in methods and location (Pryor et al, 2009;Wan et al, 2010;Feser et al, 2015;Laapas and Venäläinen, 2017), more analyses for observations done prior to 1959 are needed before further use of this part of the dataset. Figure 6 shows the monthly median seawater temperatures, salinities and densities in the Utö deep during the period 1911-2016.…”

Klima der Region – Zustand, bisherige Entwicklung und mögliche Änderungen bis 2100

“…Jahrhunderts hohe Werte für Nordwesteuropa auf, gefolgt von einer Abnahme der Sturmindizes bis Mitte der 1960er-Jahre. Ab Mitte der 1960er-Jahre nimmt die Sturmintensität erneut zu, bis sie Mitte der 1990er-Jahre wieder abnimmt (Feser et al 2015). Auch eine von Rosenhagen und Schatzmann (2011) im 1.…”

“…Dabei zeigt sich, dass die hohen Windgeschwindigkeiten mit denen in den 1880er-Jahren und Mitte der 1920er-Jahre vergleichbar sind (Rosenhagen 2008), als ebenfalls hohe NAO-Indizes auftraten. Dies bestätigt auch eine Aktualisierung der Zeitreihe bis 2012 (Trusilova und Riecke 2015 Feser et al (2015), dass die meisten Studien seit den 1970er-Jahren bis etwa Mitte der 1990er-Jahre in einer Zunahme der Sturmhäufigkeit in der Region zwischen 55 und 60° N über dem Nordatlantik übereinstimmen.…”

Comparison of storm damage functions and their performance

“…As a growing body of climatological research indicates, an increase in future storm intensity (see e.g. the review article by Feser et al, 2015) could lead to the emergence of new hazard profiles. Conditional on the accurate reproduction of local wind characteristics, gust-based damage functions can provide a flexible tool to assess these changes.…”

“…While there is no consensus on changes of winter storm frequency, a growing body of research supports a future increase in storm intensity (Feser et al, 2015). With this development in mind, it is questionable whether the anticipated damages will remain within the limits of insurability.…”