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Global wind speeds have increased rapidly since 2010, a new study has found, reversing a 30-year decline that it was feared could diminish renewable generation if it continued as previously anticipated.
An international team of researchers analysed observations from more than 1,400 ground weather stations around the world – mainly in mid-latitude countries in the Northern hemisphere – over a 40-year period ending in 2017.
They found that between 1978 and 2010 average annual wind speeds fell by 0.08 metres per second – or 2.3 per cent – per decade.
This phenomenon, known as “global terrestrial stilling”, was hypothesised by some to be the result of increased “surface roughness” due to enhanced plant growth and/or urbanisation.
However, the study also found that between 2010 and 2017 the average annual wind speed swelled by 0.24 metres per second per decade – three times rate at which it was decreasing beforehand. As surface roughness “did not suddenly change in 2010”, the findings contradict this hypothesis.
The paper instead suggests that “ocean–atmosphere oscillations” are likely to be the main driver of changing global wind speeds.
If this is the case, the recent increase could be expected to continue “for at least a decade” because of the slow progression of these cycles. Meanwhile, the annual output from a typical wind turbine could be expected to grow by 37 per cent.
“This rapid increase in global wind speeds is certainly good news for the power industry,” said Adrian Chappell, a report co-author from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.
“The reversal in global terrestrial stilling bodes well for the expansion of large-scale and efficient wind power generation systems in these mid-latitude countries in the near future.”
The turning point in Europe came much earlier than for the world as a whole, with wind speeds rebounding from 2003. The study identified the North Atlantic Oscillation as the primary cause of changing wind speeds in the region, with the UK being especially susceptible to its influence.
The study, which has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change, was led by a scientist based at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China.
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