RACEWIN

Regional Assessment of Climate impact on European WINdstorms:

Track clustering and multi-peril dependency

Extra-tropical cyclone: Italy, 2007.

(www.scsebnic.net/SITO_PAN)

Project Description

 

The RACEWIN project aims at assessing a potential evolution in the distribution of tracks followed by European windstorm events under a changed climate. A regional analysis is targeted. A better understanding of the clustering effect (several events following one another along a similar path), along with studying the response of the phenomena to a climate change signal is also within the scope of the project. This project addresses the 2009 Call 2: Impact of Climate Change on European Windstorm tracks of the Axa Research Fund (http://researchfund.AXA.com/en/).

In contrast to previous studies on the effect of climate change and storminess, this project focuses analysis to aspects that are directly relevant to insured losses over Europe.

The Research Team

 

University of Exeter:

Professor David Stephenson is the principal investigator. Based at the university of Exeter, he is the joiint Met Office Chair in the Statistical Analysis of Weather and Climate, and the director of the Exeter Climate Systems research centre which is part of the mathematics research institute. His research involves the development and application of advanced statistical methodologies for better understanding climate variations and improving quality of weather and climate forecasts. A highly cited author, he has published over 100 papers in high quality journals and has an extensive experience in windstorm related research.

 

Dr Renato Vitolo is a Willis Research Fellow based at the University of Exeter, where he will become lecturer in mathematical modelling of the climate system (July 2012). He has multidisciplinary interests, ranging from the quantification of correlated and clustered weather hazards (windstorms, hurricanes, floods) to the application of dynamical systems theory to atmospheric phenomena (low-frequency variability).

 

Dr Chris Ferro is lecturer in statistical science, with expertise in extreme value statistics and interests in developing statistical methods for climate sciences; describing and understanding the changing risks of extreme weather events; improving probabilistic weather forecasts; quantifying and understanding forecast quality.

 

Dr Theodoros Economou is the RACEWIN postdoc. His PhD was on modelling point processes with a latent structure. He has a strong background in statistical modelling and computational statistics.

 

Met Office:

Ruth McDonald is senior climate scientist and an expert in etra-tropical and tropical cyclones. Her main area of research involves understanding the mechanisms of climate change by analysing changes in extra-tropical and tropical cyclones in global coupled ocean-atmosphere models and in atmosphere models forced with enhanced sea surface temperatures. She is also involved in assessing the simulation of storms in climate models.

 

Dr Lynsey McColl comes from a statistical background. Her main focus is working with the energy industry to adapt to climate change. A member of the Energy Phase 2 team, an innovative project sponsored by the entire energy sector, Lynsey examined the resilience of the electricity network to weather. In addition she works with UKCIP providing scientific support for the recently launched UK Climate Projections.

 

 

Specific Objectives

 

▪ Data produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre from both global and regional (European) atmosphere models will be used. The former will anable analysis of large scale driving factors while the former will give an understanding of the hazard (e.g. surfase wind speed) produced by the storms

 

▪ Apply novel statistical approaches (e.g. extreme value models) to assess the dependency between windstorm events. The statistical modelling will allow proper quantification of the efect of clustering and multi-peril dependency on estimates of storm related risk and how it might change in the future.

 

▪ The project will set up a much needed European Windstorm Research Network (EUWIRN) to help consolidate European research in this highly relevant area of climate science. The network will help bring together leading European scientists in storm research together with experts from catastrophe risk assessment (e.g. AXA).

 

 

In 2010, windstorm Xynthia swept through France on the heels of Wera, causing overlapping footprints of damaging winds.

(G. Zuba and M. Simic, (2010), European Windstorms: Implications of Storm Clustering on Definitions of Occurrence Losses, AIR online article: www.air-worldwide.com/PublicationsItem.aspx?id=19693)

Contact/Further Information: t.economou@ex.ac.uk