In France, the mistral particularly affects Provence, Languedoc east of Montpellier, as well as all of the Rhône Valley from Lyon to Marseille, and as far southeast as Corsica and Sardinia. After excluding errors due to the large-scale pressure fields, further error sources could be identified. All simulations except LMD-LMDZ show better agreement with QuikSCAT than ERA-Interim, which also underestimates the wind speed. In the Languedoc area, where the tramontane is the strongest wind, the mistral and the tramontane blow together onto the Gulf of Lion and the northwest of the western Mediterranean, and can be felt to the east of the Balearic Islands, in Sardinia, and sometimes as far as the coast of Africa. 2005) and their interaction with sea breezes (Bastin et al. The TRUE/FALSE time series were transformed to 1 (TRUE) and 0 (FALSE) values. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00176.1, Ruti PM, Marullo S, D’Ortenzio F, Tremant M (2008) Comparison of analyzed and measured wind speeds in the perspective of oceanic simulations over the mediterranean basin: Analyses, QuikSCAT and buoy data. La Météorologie 50:30–38, Jiménez P, Dudhia J (2014) On the wind stress formulation over shallow waters in atmospheric models. When regarding the 631 (1409) days with lowest ERA-Interim sea level pressure in this area in 2000–2008 as Mistral (Tramontane) days, the agreement with the observed M/T time series is 55 %. Therefore, processes in the valleys will be discussed in more detail in the next section. Several case studies have been performed on Mistral events (Guenard et al. See Fig. The LMDZ simulation with \(0.44^\circ\) grid spacing was performed by Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD), where the model was developed. The other simulations show similar RMSE patterns (not shown). Create a website or blog at WordPress.com Gusts above this value have been found to cause damage to forests in complex terrain (Jungo et al. Meteorol Z 17(4):347–348, Ruti P, Somot S, Giorgi F, Dubois C, Flaounas E, Obermann A, Dell’Aquila A, Pisacane G, Harzallah A, Lombardi E, Ahrens B, Akhtar N, Alias A, Arsouze T, Aznar R, Bastin S, Bartholy J, BérangerK Beuvier J, Bouffies-Cloché S, Brauch J, Cabos W, Calmanti S, Calvet JC, Carillo A, Conte D, Coppola E, Djurdjevic V, Drobinski P, Elizalde-Arellano A, Gaertner M, Galàn P, Gallardo C, Gualdi S, Goncalves M, Jorba O, Jordà G, L’Heveder B, Lebeaupin-Brossier C, Li L, Liguori G, Lionello P, Maciàs D, Nabat P, Onol B, Raikovic B, Ramage K, Sevault F, Sannino G, Struglia M, Sanna A, Torma C, Vervatis V (2015) MED-CORDEX initiative for mediterranean climate studies. The simulations done with IPSL-WRF, UCLM-PROMES, and LMD-LMDZ show a mostly negative bias, while the biases of both GUF-CCLM and CMCC-CCLM are mostly positive. Furthermore, IPSL-WRF and UCLM-PROMES overestimate the wind speed over France, which makes a discussion of spatial patterns in comparison to the other models difficult. The roughness length varies depending on waves—and therefore on wind speed—over the sea surface. Both valleys (areas outlined in blue in Fig. 2008). The UK's Met Office also lists Shetland (pictured) as being the gustiest place in Britain, with annual average winds speeds reaching 27 km/p (17 mph) in exposed areas. About 220 km away from the coast, all models reach a wind direction RMSE close to the accuracy of the reference QuikSCAT product. Table 2 shows the resulting numbers of days for each class. The wind speed in the eastern Gulf of Lion also increases, and reaches 8–12 m/s. It sometimes lasts only one or two days, frequently lasts several days, and sometimes lasts more than a week. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. The Tramontane (middle column of Fig. On M/T days, the slope is negative for all simulations (indicating a change from clockwise to counterclockwise-rotated wind). 2008). J Phys Oceanogr 34:1429–1439, Bastin S, Drobinski P, Guénard V, Caccia JL, Campistron B, Dabas AM, Delville P, Reitebuch O, Werner C (2006) On the interaction between sea breeze and summer mistral at the exit of the rhône valley. All in all, a rather unpleasant sensation. doi:10.1127/0941-2948/2014/0527, Lange B, Højstrup J, Larsen S, Barthelmie R (2001) A fetch dependent model of sea surface roughness for offshore wind power utilisation. The last section contains a summary and conclusion. Most models show smaller wind speed biases than ERA-Interim in the Mistral and Tramontane areas of southern France. Psychometrika 73(4):777–789. (see external links.). All simulated sea level pressure data sets were bilinear-interpolated to a common \(0.25^\circ\) grid, while surface wind data sets were bilinear-interpolated to the SAFRAN grid for evaluation over France, and to the QuikSCAT grid for evaluation over the Mediterranean Sea. Here, \(\alpha\) denotes the Charnock parameter, g the gravity constant, and \(u_*\) the friction velocity. These observation data are available for the period 1981–2010. It consists of the information of whether or not a Mistral and/or Tramontane-permitting sea level pressure pattern was present in the simulation on that day. Nature 422(6929):279–283, Quintana-Seguí P, Le Moigne P, Durand Y, Martin E, Habets F, Baillon M, Canellas C, Franchisteguy L, Morel S (2008) Analysis of near-surface atmospheric variables: validation of the SAFRAN analysis over france. Enter your email address to follow A Crafty Traveler and receive notifications of new posts by email. Thus, the simulation daily means are means over the whole day, while QuikSCAT daily means are the average of two measurements per day. The simulations used in this work were downloaded from the Med-CORDEX database. ( Log Out /  ( Log Out /  Table 5 shows the Pearson correlation coefficient for M/T time series as Table 3, but for GUF-CCLM 4-8-18 at \(0.088^\circ\). In the The validation data set consists of all days in this time intervall, which are not included in the training data set. The number of days in each category is given in Table 2. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is the only model in this study that is nudged to wind, temperature, and humidity ERA-Interim fields above the boundary layer. 2005; Drobinski et al. All the simulation time series agree with the observed time series on more than 74 % of the days. To evaluate the simulations in terms of surface wind direction, QuikSCAT was chosen as reference (no gridded wind direction data over France is available). St. John's is the capital city of Canada's Newfoundland and Labrador province. doi:10.1016/j.ocemod.2012.02.003, Stéfanon M, Drobinski P, D’Andrea F, Lebeaupin-Brossier C, Bastin S (2014) Soil moisture-temperature feedbacks at meso-scale during summer heat waves over western europe.