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North Atlantic atmospheric circulation and surface wind in the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula: uncertainty and long term downscaled variability

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Abstract

The variability and predictability of the surface wind field at the regional scale is explored over a complex terrain region in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula by means of a downscaling technique based on Canonical Correlation Analysis. More than a decade of observations (1992–2005) allows for calibrating and validating a statistical method that elicits the main associations between the large scale atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic and Mediterranean areas and the regional wind field. In an initial step the downscaling model is designed by selecting parameter values from practise. To a large extent, the variability of the wind at monthly timescales is found to be governed by the large scale circulation modulated by the particular orographic features of the area. The sensitivity of the downscaling methodology to the selection of the model parameter values is explored, in a second step, by performing a systematic sampling of the parameters space, avoiding a heuristic selection. This provides a metric for the uncertainty associated with the various possible model configurations. The uncertainties associated with the model configuration are considerably dependent on the spatial variability of the wind. While the sampling of the parameters space in the model set up moderately impact estimations during the calibration period, the regional wind variability is very sensitive to the parameters selection at longer timescales. This fact illustrates that downscaling exercises based on a single configuration of parameters should be interpreted with extreme caution. The downscaling model is used to extend the estimations several centuries to the past using long datasets of sea level pressure, thereby illustrating the large temporal variability of the regional wind field from interannual to multicentennial timescales. The analysis does not evidence long term trends throughout the twentieth century, however anomalous episodes of high/low wind speeds are identified.

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  1. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/telecontents.shtml.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the interesting discussions and valuable comments to Dr. D. Bray, Dr. A. Gershunov, Dra. A. Hidalgo, Dr. J. Luterbacher, Dra. M. Montoya, Dr. C. Raible, Dr. P. D. Sardeshmukh, Dr. D. Stephenson, Dr. S. Wagner and Dr. E. Zorita. We acknowledge Dr. Luterbacher for providing the SLP reconstructions back to 1650 and the MedCLIVAR organization for providing the ESF grant that allowed for a stay at the University of Bern, Switzerland. We thank Acciona Energía for facilitating the wind farms dataset. We are also grateful to the ECMWF for providing the ERA-40 data and the outputs from the operational model used in this research. We acknowledge the working framework established by the collaboration between CIEMAT and the PalMA group at UCM (Ref. 09/153). Part of the financial support for some of the authors involved in this work was provided by the projects CGL2005-06966-C07/CLI, PSE-120000-2007-14 and CGL2008-05093/CLI. The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Energías Renovables, CIEMAT, Avenida Complutense s/n, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    E. García-Bustamante, J. Navarro & P. A. Jiménez

  2. Departamento de Astrofísica y CC. de la Atmósfera, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    E. García-Bustamante, J. F. González-Rouco & P. A. Jiménez

  3. Institute of Geography and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    E. Xoplaki

  4. Departamento de Física, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    J. P. Montávez

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  1. E. García-Bustamante
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Correspondence to E. García-Bustamante.

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García-Bustamante, E., González-Rouco, J.F., Navarro, J. et al. North Atlantic atmospheric circulation and surface wind in the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula: uncertainty and long term downscaled variability. Clim Dyn 38, 141–160 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0969-x

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