Loss potentials based on an ensemble forecast: How likely are winter windstorm losses similar to 1990?

In this paper we investigate the feasibility and added value of using the seasonal hindcasts of the ECMWF System 4 as a hazard event set for European winter windstorms damage calculations. The windstorms are identified for every ensemble member and every year by an objective windstorm tracking algorithm. The damages are calculated directly from the obtained wind footprints via the open source natural catastrophe damage model CLIMADA for Germany, the UK, France and Spain and compared to the loss from ERA‐Interim. The results show that the ensembles of losses in System 4 nicely capture the inter‐annual loss variability of the reanalysis. Due to more than 1,500 years of “virtual reality” windstorm data from the hindcasts, the return levels of extreme losses can be estimated fairly accurately. Based on System 4, the losses in the scale of 1990 (January, February, March and December including the prominent windstorm Daria) represent a 20‐year event in Germany whereas they represent a 100‐year event for the UK. Thus, a considerably shorter return period compared to return periods calculated from ERA‐Interim alone.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Atmospheric Science Letters

• Publication date

  2019-03-14

• Fields of study

  Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1002/asl.891
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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