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Trends and low-frequency variability of storminess over western Europe, 1878–2007

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Abstract

This study analyzes extremes of geostrophic wind speeds derived from sub-daily surface pressure observations at 13 sites in the European region from the Iberian peninsula to Scandinavia for the period from 1878 or later to 2007. It extends previous studies on storminess conditions in the Northeast (NE) Atlantic-European region. It also briefly discusses the relationship between storminess and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The results show that storminess conditions in the region from the Northeast Atlantic to western Europe have undergone substantial decadal or longer time scale fluctuations, with considerable seasonal and regional differences (especially between winter and summer, and between the British Isles-North Sea area and other parts of the region). In the North Sea and the Alps areas, there has been a notable increase in the occurrence frequency of strong geostrophic winds from the mid to the late twentieth century. The results also show that, in the cold season (December–March), the NAO-storminess relationship is significantly positive in the north-central part of this region, but negative in the south-southeastern part.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to all members of GCOS/WCRP AOPC/OOPC (Atmosphere/Ocean Observation Panel for Climate) Working Group on Surface Pressure for providing us with access to the International Surface Pressure Databank, which includes almost all the pressure data we analyzed in this study. Dr. José Antonio López of the Spanish State Meteorological Agency is also acknowledged for providing extra data to fill in data gaps in the records of two Spanish stations in the ISPD. Rob Allan is primarily funded as Program Manager of the international Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative by the Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence (QCCCE) in Australia, with some additional funds from the UK Joint Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Integrated Climate Programme, DECC/Defra (GA01101). The authors also wish to thank Drs. Xuebin Zhang and Seung-Ki Min for their useful internal review of an earlier version of this manuscript, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful review comments.

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Author notes

  1. Francis W. Zwiers

    Present address: Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Climate Research Division, Science and Technology Branch, Environment Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Xiaolan L. Wang, Hui Wan, Francis W. Zwiers & Val R. Swail

  2. CIRES, Climate Diagnostics Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Gilbert P. Compo

  3. NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Physical Sciences Division, Boulder, CO, USA

    Gilbert P. Compo

  4. Hadley Centre, Met Office, Exeter, UK

    Robert J. Allan

  5. NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, NC, USA

    Russell S. Vose

  6. Meteo-France, Direction de la Climatologie, Toulouse, France

    Sylvie Jourdain

  7. STG Inc., Asheville, NC, USA

    Xungang Yin

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  1. Xiaolan L. Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiaolan L. Wang.

Appendix: Data quality control and interpolation procedures

Appendix: Data quality control and interpolation procedures

As in W09, a site in this study also refers to the combination of two or more stations that are very close to each other; and each SLP data series is also first screened for large random errors and then interpolated in time, using a natural spline fit, to ensure that the three sites that form a triangle have SLP values for the same hours (see W09 for more details). The screening for large random errors is done by checking if the pressure tendency lies within pre-set limits and comparing the segment of SLP observation with the corresponding segment of observations at the available nearest stations (see Appendix A in W09 for details). Table 4 lists the erroneous/suspicious SLP values identified for the 9 sites that were not previously analyzed (sites 1–9 in Table 1). Note that the general characteristics of the decadal or longer time scale storminess variability are not significantly affected by the correction or exclusion of these erroneous/suspicious SLP values, which, however, does make a few outliers disappear.

Table 4 Erroneous/suspicious SLP values that were either corrected or set to missing. Other stations are as corrected by Wang et al. (2009)
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Wang, X.L., Wan, H., Zwiers, F.W. et al. Trends and low-frequency variability of storminess over western Europe, 1878–2007. Clim Dyn 37, 2355–2371 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-011-1107-0

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