The evaluation of wind extremes from regional climate models and reanalysis over Belgium

Wind storms are known to cause substantial impacts on human safety and infrastructure across Europe. Additionally, climate projections using regional climate models indicate that wind extremes may increase over Europe under climate change (Outten and Sobolowski, 2021). Despite its socio-economic importance, however, the representation of wind extremes in models remains underexplored. One of the reasons for this is the lack of reliable long-term observations for model validation leading to the use of reanalysis as a reference dataset even though the reanalysis biases in near-surface wind speeds are well documented. 

We compare the EURO-CORDEX multi-model ensemble and ERA5 reanalysis against the quality-controlled observational EuSWiO dataset (Rojas‐Labanda et al., 2023). More specifically, we extract return levels from extreme winds from the daily maximum or daily average wind speed for 130 station locations in and around Belgium. While, as expected, ERA5 shows improved temporal correlations, it suffers from a systematic underestimation of high wind extremes while the EURO-CORDEX ensemble median produces return levels closer to EuSWiO. This gives confidence in the use of regional climate model ensembles for climate-change projections and advocates caution in the use of reanalyses for extreme winds.

• Rojas‐Labanda et al. (2023). Surface wind over Europe: Data and variability. International Journal of Climatology, 43(1), 134-156.
• Outten, S., and Sobolowski, S. (2021). Extreme wind projections over Europe from the Euro-CORDEX regional climate models. Weather and Climate Extremes, 33, 100363.