Historical and future risk from storms in a wider European region as climate and society change

Midlatitude storms are the most damaging natural phenomena in the UK [1] and can become far more detrimental as global climate changes [2]. In the whole Europe, storms were the second most prevalent cause (32%) of economic damages from 1970–2019 [3]. 

This study will map the historical storm risk and risk in future climate projections in the region(s) of interest to the student(s) with research target areas available in the UK, across the rest of Europe, and north Africa. The project will utilize a spectrum of observational and state-of-the-art reanalysis datasets with high horizontal resolution. For example, ECMWF ERA5 (~25 km [4]), ERA5-Land (~10 km [5]), and CERRA (~5 km: [6]) reanalysis. Additionally, the student(s) will have opportunity to select socio-economic dimension(s) along which they will analyze propagation and transformation of environmental hazard into specific sectoral risk. For example, wind speed distribution has nonlinear effect on economic damages to wind turbines and high-power lines. Novel statistics and machine learning methods ([7]) will be applied to estimate future risk based on NASA GDDP-CMIP6 post-processed historical and future projections (~25 km: [8]). 

References:

[1] UK Met Office: https://climate.metoffice.cloud/

[2] NOAA Global monitoring laboratory: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

[3] WMO-No. 1267: https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/57564

[4] Hersbach H, Bell B, Berrisford P, et al., 2020, The ERA5 global reanalysis. Q J R Meteorol Soc., 146: 1999–2049. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3803

[5] Muñoz-Sabater, J., et al., 2021, ERA5-Land: A state-of-the-art global reanalysis dataset for land applications, Earth Syst. Sci. Data,13, 4349–4383, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4349-2021.

[6] Ridal, M., et al., 2024, CERRA, the Copernicus European Regional Reanalysis system. Q J R Meteorol Soc., 150(763), 3385–3411. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.4764

[7] Hsieh, W.W., 2023, Introduction to Environmental Data Science. Cambridge University Press; https://doi.org/10.1017/9781107588493

[8] Thrasher, B., Wang, W., Michaelis, A. Nemani, R., 2021, NEX-GDDP-CMIP6. NASA Center for Climate Simulation. https://doi.org/10.7917/OFSG3345

Diversity statement

Our research community thrives on the diversity of students and staff which helps to make the University of Dundee a UK university of choice for postgraduate research.  We welcome applications from all talented individuals and are committed to widening access to those who have the ability and potential to benefit from higher education.