edu.ucar.opensky::articles:22499 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-25T15:35:38.302903 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d76q219f Human influence on European winter wind storms such as those of January 2018 2019-04-25T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d76q219f https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-271-2019 Vautard, R. author van Oldenborgh, G. J. author Otto, F. E. L. author Yiou, P. author de Vries, H. author van Meijgaard, E. author Stepek, A. author Soubeyroux, J. author Philip, S. author Kew, S. F. author Costella, C. author Singh, R. author Tebaldi, Claudia author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher Several major storms pounded western Europe in January 2018, generating large damages and casualties. The two most impactful ones, Eleanor and Friederike, are analysed here in the context of climate change. Near surface wind speed station observations exhibit a decreasing trend in the frequency of strong winds associated with such storms. High-resolution regional climate models, on the other hand, show no trend up to now and a small increase in storminess in future due to climate change. This shows that factors other than climate change, which are not in the climate models, caused the observed decline in storminess over land. A large part is probably due to increases in surface roughness, as shown for a small set of stations covering the Netherlands and in previous studies. This observed trend could therefore be independent from climate evolution. We concluded that human-induced climate change has had so far no significant influence on storms like the two mentioned. However, all simulations indicate that global warming could lead to a marginal increase (0 %-20 %) in the probability of extreme hourly winds until the middle of the century, consistent with previous modelling studies. This excludes other factors, such as surface roughness, aerosols, and decadal variability, which have up to now caused a much larger negative trend. Until these factors are correctly simulated by climate models, we cannot give credible projections of future storminess over land in Europe. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2019 Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. None eng geoscientificInformation