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Thunderstorm straight line winds intensify with climate change

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 1353–1359 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Straight line winds (SLWs), or non-tornadic thunderstorm winds, are causing widespread damage in many regions around the world. These powerful gusts are associated with strong downdraughts in thunderstorms, rear inflow jets and mesovortices. Despite their significance, our understanding of climate change effects on SLWs remains limited. Here, focusing on the central USA, a global hot spot for SLWs, I use observations, high-resolution modelling and theoretical considerations to show that SLWs have intensified over the past 40 years. Theoretical considerations suggest that SLWs should intensify at a rate of ~7.5% °C−1, yet the observed rates show a more pronounced increase of ~13% °C−1. The simulation results indicate a 4.8 ± 1.2-fold increase in the geographical extent affected by SLWs during the study period. These findings underscore the importance of incorporating intensifying SLWs into climate change adaptation planning to ensure the development of resilient future infrastructure.

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Fig. 1: Kilometre-scale climate models are needed to simulate SLWs.
Fig. 2: The C-404 simulation reproduces observed characteristics in convective and non-convective winds.
Fig. 3: SLW-producing environments became more frequent.
Fig. 4: Raising temperatures increases theoretical surface peak wind speeds in SLW environments.
Fig. 5: Extreme SLWs intensify with climate change.

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Data availability

The HadISD dataset is available from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisd/, the ASOS data from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/automated-surface-weather-observing-systems, the GridSat data are accessible from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gridsat/, the ERA5 reanalysis is available from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels and the C-404 output can be accessed from https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds559.0/ ref. 93.

Code availability

The code for the statistical analysis and visualization of data in this document can be accessed from https://github.com/AndreasPrein/Thunderstorm_Downbursts_Climate_Change ref. 85.

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Acknowledgements

I thank the US Geological Survey for providing computing resources on their Denali HPC system. I acknowledge high-performance computing support from Cheyenne (https://doi.org/10.5065/D6RX99HX) provided by NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement 1852977. I acknowledge support from the MIT Climate Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes. I also thank K. Ikeda and C. Liu for their efforts in creating the C-404 dataset.

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    Andreas F. Prein

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A.F.P. designed the study, collected the observational and modelling datasets, performed the analyses and wrote the manuscript.

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Prein, A.F. Thunderstorm straight line winds intensify with climate change. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 1353–1359 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01852-9

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