Spanish Extreme Winds and Their Relationships with Atlantic Large-Scale Atmospheric Patterns

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.

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