The hypothesis of this project is that, in a scenario of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, it is foreseeable that a new phase of decreasing wind speed will dominate during the 21st century
These changes have important socioeconomic implications, for example, in the production of wind energy, and environmental implications, such as droughts, among others
The study is led by the Desertification Research Center (CIDE, CSIC-UV-GVA).
A research project developed by the Desertification Research Center (CIDE), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the University of Valencia and the Generalitat Valenciana, will analyze for the first time the projections of wind speed during the 21st century, with special attention to the Iberian Peninsula. The work, led by César Azorín Molina, Ramón y Cajal researcher and coordinator of the Climate, Atmosphere and Ocean Laboratory (Climatoc-Lab) of the CIDE, seeks to contribute to a better understanding of future changes in wind speed in a context of global warming.
The WIND-21 project will be developed until the end of 2022, thanks to funding obtained through the call for Leonardo Grants from the BBVA Foundation for Researchers and Cultural Creators 2021. This is a pioneering research in Spain that will specifically address the phenomena of weakening (stilling) and strengthening (reversal) of wind speed on a planetary scale. Both phenomena, detected in recent decades, raise numerous questions that the scientific community has not yet resolved.
In this regard, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that wind is one of the forgotten parts of the climate system given the scarce evidence on its past and future changes. For the most part, economic resources and scientific efforts have been directed towards the study of past climate variability, future climate scenarios and the atmospheric risks associated with two meteorological variables: precipitation and air temperature. In contrast, it is only in the last two decades that wind speed variability has attracted scientific attention.
The hypothesis of this project is that, in a scenario of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, a new phase of stilling is expected to dominate during the 21st century. Moreover, this decrease in wind speed will not be a global-scale phenomenon; it is expected, however, to detect significant differences in projected trends at the regional level depending on multiple factors: latitude, season, continent vs. ocean-sea, at different levels of the troposphere, coastal vs. inland and/or mountain, etc.
Project phases
In the first phase, all available wind speed climate series from more than 28,000 weather stations will be collected, processed and homogenized, as well as simulations from 20 models of the Coupled Climate Model Inter-Comparison Project (CMIP6). These data will be used to evaluate historical simulations for the period 1850-2014, and to make projections of climate system and wind speed changes over the period 2015-2100 under different economic and social development scenarios.
In the second phase, the statistical analysis of wind trends and cycles from 1850 to 2100 will be carried out in order to study the past and future spatio-temporal variability of wind speed. At the end of this phase, the analysis of the causes (atmosphere-ocean oscillations) that could be behind the observed-simulated changes will be addressed. Finally, the third phase will analyze the implications of the projected changes, with emphasis on the wind energy sector in the medium and long term.
Socioeconomic and environmental implications
Predicting in advance the climatic cycles of weakening and strengthening of winds is key because of their direct implications in multiple areas. In the wind industry, altering the capacity of electricity production; in agriculture and the hydrological sector, due to the role of wind in the evaporative demand of the atmosphere, affecting crop water consumption and the availability of water resources; as well as in natural disasters caused by windstorms with economic damage and loss of human lives.
It also has direct effects on air quality and health consequences due to the effect of wind on the dispersion of atmospheric pollution; the construction of coastal infrastructure (dikes) and urban planning and development; airport operations and road traffic; the spread of forest fires and damage to forests; weather forecasting with warnings of adverse phenomena and atmospheric dynamics; tourism and wind sports; seed dispersion and migratory routes; the spread of forest fires and damage to forests; weather forecasting with warnings for adverse phenomena and atmospheric dynamics; tourism and wind sports; seed dispersal and bird migration routes; and wind erosion, among many other fields.
CIDE Communication
