CATCHING THE WIND

Wind is the missing piece of the climate change puzzle. But lack of data makes it difficult to model wind systems

GLOBAL TERRESTRIAL stilling, as the decrease of wind speed observed near Earth’s surface is known in scientific parlance, is a term that sounds deceptively calm. While scientists have discovered the phenomenon only recently—in the 2000s, as per some estimates—it has already caused lasting changes to global weather patterns.

Consider Europe. The region has been experiencing heatwaves and droughts in some part or the other since 2017. One possible reason for this build-up of hot and dry conditions could be the weakening of storm systems that bring cold and moist air from the ocean to land in a west to east direction. Using climate models, Rei Chemke of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, and Dim Coumou, professor of climate extremes and societal risks at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands, have analysed how storms have behaved since the pre-industrial era. Chemke’s analysis, published in Nature in April 2024, shows that warming has weakened summer storms in the northern hemisphere between 30o and 60o latitudes.

Another such impact of changing winds is the record low sea ice extent in Antarctica since 2016. In 2023 the icy continent experienced its lowest sea ice extent at 16.98 million sq km, a staggering 1.46 million sq km below the long-term average.