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The Case Study of Windstorm VIVIAN, Switzerland, February 27, 1990

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The Case Study of Windstorm VIVIAN, Switzerland, February 27, 1990 1 Published in Climate Dynamics 18: 145-168, 2001 S. Goyette á M. Beniston á D. Caya á R. Laprise P. Jungo Numerical investigation of an extreme storm with the Canadian Regional Climate Model: the case study of windstorm VIVIAN, Switzerland, February 27, 1990 Received: 6 July 2000 / Accepted: 13 February 2001 Abstract The windstorm VIVIAN that severely aected progress towards ®ner scales in the horizontal, the ver- Switzerland in February 1990 has been investigated tical and the nesting frequency enhancement helps to using the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM). simulate windspeed variability. However, the variability This winter stormwas characterised by a deep cyclone in within the larger domain is limited by the archival fre- the North Atlantic and by strong geopotential and quency of reanalysis data that cannot resolve distur- baroclinic north-south gradients in the troposphere over bances with time scale shorter than 12 h. Results show Western Europe resulting in high windspeeds in Swit- that while the model simulates well the synoptic-scale zerland. Our principal emphasis is to demonstrate the ¯ow at 60-kmresolution, cascade self-nesting is neces- ability of the CRCM to simulate the wind®eld intensity sary to capture ®ne-scale features of the topography that and patterns. In order to simulate winds at very high modulate the ¯ow that generate localised wind resolution we operate an optimal multiple self-nesting enhancement over Switzerland. with the CRCM in order to increase the horizontal and vertical resolution. The simulation starts with down- scaling NCEP-NCAR reanalyses at 60 kmwith 20 ver- tical levels, followed by an intermediate 5-km simulation 1 Introduction with 30 vertical levels nested in the former. The 5-km output is in a ®nal phase used for initial and lateral Extreme weather events have signi®cant impacts on the conditions for a 1-kmresolution simulation with 46 natural environment and on many socio-economic sec- vertical levels. The multiple self-nesting in the horizontal tors (e.g. Beniston 1997). These events tend to have a is necessary to reach sucient resolution to better cap- greater in¯uence than shifts in mean values, which are ture the orographic forcing that modulates the atmo- commonly used as the fundamental quantity for dis- spheric circulation at ®ne scales, whereas the vertical cussing climatic changes. It is therefore of interest to resolution enhancement helps to better simulate the predict the potential shifts of extremes in an altered boundary layer that modulates the windspeed along the climate. surface and better represents the atmospheric circulation Severe storms are the basis for severe weather, and a with a complex vertical structure (low-level jets, gravity dominant characteristic is their associated high winds. waves and frontal features). It has also been found that Wind extremes, for example, are of great concern be- the simulated temporal variability of the wind®eld and cause they may lead to considerable damage to forests of most variables at the ®ner scales increases with the and man-made infrastructure, and disrupt numerous increasing nesting frequency. This indicates that as we socio-economic activities. Since this crucial problem is of particular importance at the regional and local scales, it is therefore of prime interest to assess how well regional climate models (RCMs) can reproduce documented events. This step is a prerequisite to study the potential S. Goyette (&) á M. Beniston á P. Jungo changes of extremes in an altered global climate as Institute of Geography, University of Fribourg, projected for the twenty-®rst century. Pe rolles, CH-1700, Switzerland E-mail: [email protected] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 1996) has identi®ed mountainous regions as one D. Caya á R. Laprise Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, of the more sensitive environmental systems which re- Universite du Que bec aÁ Montre al, B.P. 8888, quire particular attention in terms of both fundamental Succ. Centre-ville Montreal, Que bec, Canada H3C 3P8 climate processes and the impacts of climate change 2 (Beniston et al. 1997). It is of interest to know the extent and analysis in Canada (Caya et al. 1995; Caya and to which extreme wind event frequency over mountain- Laprise 1999). The results of Laprise et al. (1998) high- ous regions may be sensitive to global change. Most light its potential for continuous multi-year simulations extreme cases are de®ned as ``unusual'' events and little at 45-kmresolution over western Canada. is known about their genesis, intensities, duration, re- A ``companion'' version of the CRCM, with the same turn periods and frequency distributions. Even though dynamics but dierent physical parameterization pack- much is known concerning local wind climatology as ages, nicknamed MC2, currently used at the meteoro- well as other fundamental quantities, this is not the case logical services at MSC-RPN (Meteorological Service of for most extreme events. Canada-Recherche en Pre vision Nume rique in Mont- Certain mountain regions such as the Alps are re al) by Benoit et al. (1997) was run in a self-nesting densely populated and play a key role in their economy mode in order to verify its capability to simulate a large and social sectors. Extreme wind events are likely to range of atmospheric ¯ow by simulating an Atlantic have major impacts on these sectors, notably on forests winter cyclogenesis over the east coast of North America (Holenstein 1994; Combe 1998). Thus it appears and local downslope windstormover modesttopogra- reasonable to focus ®rst on a particular region aected phy. The self-nesting technique has also been used by by extreme wind events which are well-documented in Christensen et al. (1998) to scale down Scandinavian terms of meteorological records, to develop techniques climate to 19-km resolution. Although there are clear to test and validate regional models, and to re®ne the indications that the higher resolution helped to solve a diagnostic tools in order to gain deeper insights into the number of regional details of the climate, the model phenomenon. Case studies of severe windstorms over performance is limited by the quality of the large-scale Western Europe with a numerical approach appear driving data and by limitations in certain physical worthwhile to evaluate the model skill on the one hand, parametrisation schemes. and to develop the tools which will be needed to build a During the months of January and February 1990, a ``climatology'' of future wind extremes in Switzerland, series of deep cyclones intensifying over Scandinavia in- on the other hand. duced widespread extensive wind damage in Western The Swiss Alps are by far the best-documented Europe. Widespread and damaging gales aected the mountain area in the world in terms of weather and United Kingdom(McCallumand Norris 1990; Ham- climate and related environmental characteristics (Barry mond 1990) and Switzerland (SchuÈ epp et al. 1994). These 1992). Several summit observatories have records span- windstorms together caused more than 10 billion US $ in ning 100 years and a dense network of regular observing damage. More than 50 million cubic meters of harvest- stations covers Switzerland. This region thus provides able timber was destroyed in Germany, Austria, the best information to conduct and validate numerical Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, and France (Flavin 1994). experiments in highly complex orography. These exceptional events produced extreme wind speeds Analyses of changes in the simulated climate extremes measured at a number of alpine pass stations. In order to have been attempted on a global basis with general cir- evaluate the CRCM's ability to reproduce such an ex- culation models (e.g. Zwiers and Kharin 1998). How- treme wind event, we simulated a particular windstorm ever, a similar study over Switzerland requires a regional known as VIVIAN that aected Switzerland in late investigation using a RCM in many respects. First, most February 1990 and compared results with observed data. of the impacts from anticipated climatic change are as- The spatial and temporal resolution of contemporary sociated with ®ne scale processes so that the use of a reanalysis data is still too coarse to diagnose regional high-resolution model is essential; second, a ®ne model- wind patterns, their strength, and their evolution over grid mesh is needed to resolve the complex terrain of the complex topography characteristics of Switzerland. We Alps; third, such a limited-area model is computation- assume that the synoptic-scale patterns found in re- ally very ecient compared to a global model of similar analysis data are sampled accurately enough to be used mesh size. Once a contemporary climate has been sim- as input in RCMs in order to simulate atmospheric ulated and validated against observed climatology, a circulation at higher resolution within the complex climate change experiment can be performed in order to orography of Switzerland. evaluate the shifts in the simulated extremes. Regional This study describes the methodology used to simu- climate models have proved to be successful over com- late the windstorm VIVIAN with the help of the CRCM plex terrain of North America (Dickinson et al. 1989; and provides an overview of the model's performance. Giorgi and Bates 1989), Europe (Giorgi et al. 1992; Section 2.1 gives a description of the CRCM and the Jones et al. 1995), and over the Alps (Marinucci et al. approach to down track extreme wind events over 1995; Rotach et al. 1997) to characterise climatic vari- Switzerland on the basis of the National Centers for ability at ®ne scales. Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmo- The Canadian Regional Climate Model (hereinafter spheric Research (NCEP-NCAR) reanalysis data. Then referred to as CRCM) is one such model capable of we describe in Sect. 2.2 the multiple nesting technique simulating climate at high spatial resolution.
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