Extreme wind speeds in the European sector of the Arctic

Abstract

Variations in extreme wind speed over the European part of the Arctic are studied from the data of meteorological observations, reanalysis, and modeling based on the INM CM4 climate model. It is demonstrated that the extremes determined from the observational data are a mixture of two datasets well simulated by the Weibull distribution. According to the special metaphoric terminology, they are called “black swans” and “dragons.” The analysis of extreme wind speeds based on the reanalysis and INM CM4 data demonstrated that they consist of “black swans” only. This important fact indicates that the models (at least those with medium horizontal resolution) are not able to simulate some essential circulation mechanisms causing the formation of significant anomalies of wind speed. Hence, the problem of direct identification of wind speed extremes based on the atmospheric modeling remains open.