Climate change projections: Technical notes

• Technical note on probabilistic wind projections

Key findings for the wind projections by 2050s:

• Projected changes in summer wind speed covers both positive and negative changes but is generally skewed towards negative changes in the UK, except for slightly positive changes in Scotland. This is consistent with the poleward shift of the storm track in summer.
• Projected changes in winter wind speed are approximately symmetrical around near-zero change.
• The largest uncertainty ranges are over Scotland.

Download a Technical note on probabilistic projections of wind speed (pdf, 3.1 MB).

• Technical note on storm projections

Key findings for the storm projections are:

• UKCIP02 showed an increase in the future number of winter depressions attributed to a southward shift in the North Atlantic storm track.
• UKCP09 shows little evidence of a change in the frequency or intensity of UK storms.
• There are uncertainties associated with both the position and strength of the present day storm tracks and these contribute to the large uncertainties in the future predictions of storms.

Download a Technical note that summarises the information available on storms in UKCIP02, UKCP09 and selected other sources (pdf, 125 KB). Different publications can define storms differently and so readers must be clear how a storm is being defined.