Journal
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
Volume 27, Issue 10, Pages 3692-3712Publisher
AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00652.1
Keywords
Wind; Climate variability; Climatology; Trends
Categories
Funding
- CSIC [JAE-DOC043]
- Secretaria per a Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Economia i Coneixement, de la Generalitat de Catalunya i del programa Cofund de les Accions Marie Curie del 7e Programa marc d'R+Ddela Unio Europea [2011 BP-B 00078]
- Spanish Commission of Science and Technology [CGL2011-27574-C02-02, CGL2011-27536/HID, CGL2011-29263-C02-01, PSE.120000.2007.14]
- FEDER
- ACQWA [FP7-ENV-2008-1-212250]
- European Comission
- Efecto de los escenarios de cambio climatico sobre la hidrologia superficial y la gestion de embalses del Pirineo Aragones
- Obra Social La Caixa
- Creacion de un modelo de alta resolucion espacial para cuantificar la esquiabilidad y la afluencia turistica en el Pirineo bajo distintos escenarios de cambio climatico [CTTP1/12]
- Comunidad de Trabajo de los Pirineos
- ENAC [PTDC/AAC-CLI/103567/2008]
- Portuguese Science Foundation
- Climatology Group (Catalan Government) [2009 SGR 443]
- [JCI-2011-10263]
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Near-surface wind speed trends recorded at 67 land-based stations across Spain and Portugal for 1961-2011, also focusing on the 1979-2008 subperiod, were analyzed. Wind speed series were subjected to quality control, reconstruction, and homogenization using a novel procedure that incorporated the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University-National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model (MM5)-simulated series as reference. The resultant series show a slight downward trend for both 1961-2011 (-0.016 m s(-1) decade(-1)) and 1979-2008 (-0.010 m s(-1) decade(-1)). However, differences between seasons with declining values in winter and spring, and increasing trends in summer and autumn, were observed. Even though wind stilling affected 77.8% of the stations in winter and 66.7% in spring, only roughly 40% of the declining trends were statistically significant at the p < 0.10 level. On the contrary, increasing trends appeared in 51.9% of the stations in summer and 57.4% in autumn, with also around 40% of the positive trends statistically significant at the p < 0.10 level. In this article, the authors also investigated (i) the possible impact of three atmospheric indices on the observed trends and (ii) the role played by the urbanization growth in the observed decline. An accurate homogenization and assessment of the long-term trends of wind speed is crucial for many fields such as wind energy (e.g., power generation) and agriculture-hydrology (e.g., evaporative demand).
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