TITLE:
Spanish Extreme Winds and Their Relationships with Atlantic Large-Scale Atmospheric Patterns
AUTHORS:
Alvaro Pascual, Francisco Valero, Maria Luisa Martín, Carlos García-Legaz
KEYWORDS:
Extreme Winds; Gusts; Atmospheric Circulation Variability; Analogs; Probabilistic Results
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.2 No.3A,
September
26,
2013
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this work is to review procedures to obtain
relationships between wind and large-scale atmospheric fields, with special
emphasis on extreme situation results. Such relationships are obtained by using
different methods and techniques such as wind cumulative probability functions
and composite maps. The analyses showed different mean atmospheric situations
associated with the different wind patterns, in which strong atmospheric
gradients can be related to moderate to strong winds in Spain. Additionally, a
statistical downscaling analog model, developed by the authors, is used for
diagnosing large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns and subsequently
estimating extreme wind probabilities. From an atmospheric circulation pattern
set obtained by multivariate methodology applied to a large-scale atmospheric
circulation field, estimations of wind fields, particularly extreme winds, are
obtained by means of the analogs methodology. Deterministic and probabilistic
results show that gust behaviour is quite better approximated than mean wind
speed, in general. The model presents some underestimations except
for strong winds. Moreover, the model shows better probabilistic wind results
over the Spanish northern area, highlighting that the atmospheric situations
coming from the Atlantic Ocean are better recovered to predict mean wind and
gusts in the Northern Peninsula.