Severe windstorm projections for Europe

Extreme windstorms are of considerable interest due to their potential to cause significant socio-economic damages over very large areas of land. As a result, understanding how climate change may affect the characteristics of the most severe storms is an important question for adaptation planing. However, projections of how the hazard associated with windstorms will change in the future are highly uncertain.

Here, we use an efficient statistical approach that characterises individual windstorms in terms of their intensity and exposure to estimate the present-day risk from such storms. We then use a methodology used widely in detection and attribution of climate change to assess how such characteristics may change into the future. Using windstorms simulated by a diverse set of high-resolution regional climate model projections for Europe, the EURO-CORDEX ensemble, we provide projections of risk over a range of future climate scenarios. Finally, we explore how the variety of driving and regional models influence the associated uncertainties, and how considering the performance and independence of the models can improve the robustness of the projections.