Global stilling: where has all the wind gone?

If global stilling is happening, the phenomenon may be due to the Arctic “warming at a faster rate than equatorial regions, which means there is less difference in temperature between hot and cold areas”, wrote Hannah Bloomfield, a postdoctoral researcher in climate risk analytics at Bristol University, on The Conversation. “This temperature difference is what drives large-scale winds around the globe through a phenomenon called thermal wind balance,” she explained. 

What next?

The UK and Europe are becoming increasingly reliant on wind power as part of the push to ditch coal and other fossil fuels.

The UK has a total of “14.2GW of onshore wind turbines, with another 13.7GW offshore”, said Moore on Sky News. And the government is aiming to increase offshore capacity “to 50GW by 2030, and to turn off gas and coal power stations by 2035”.

But “having the turbines doesn’t make them turn – as we are finding out now”, Moore added.

Global stilling threatens to have a “massive” impact on alternative energy production, said Robbins on Yale Environment 360. Paul Williams, professor of atmospheric science at Reading University, told the online magazine that a 10% decline in wind speeds would result in 30% drop in energy extracted from wind turbines, “and that would be catastrophic” . 

“Lazy winds” mean we can’t rely on wind power alone as a source of renewable energy,  said science commentator Anjana Ahuja in the Financial Times. Ahuja argued that to “future proof” our energy supply while meeting climate objectives, “diversifying supply, including wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear”, was vital. That includes “developing better storage options”; “applying long-term weather forecasting to the energy sector”; and building infrastructure such as “electricity interconnectors”.

“The spectre of wind droughts, which will also make heatwaves harder to bear, shows that no continent can fully insulate itself from the ill effects of climate change,” Ahuja concluded. “The symbols of global failure on this crisis multiply: the waist-deep flood, the perishing heatwave, the famine-inducing drought – and now the stilled wind turbine.”

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/environment/958900/global-stilling-where-has-all-the-wind-gone