Europe could suffer a colder winter with less wind and rain than usual, according to the European Weather Forecasts Agency, adding to the challenges for governments trying to solve the continent’s energy crisis.
Florence Rabier, director-general of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), said early signs for November and December pointed to a high-pressure period over western Europe that would likely bring colder spells and less wind and precipitation, reducing renewable energy production becomes.
The forecast, which is based on data from ECMWF and several other weather forecasting systems, including those in the UK, US, France and Japan, is a potential problem for policymakers as they seek to combat rising energy costs for businesses and homes due to huge Cuts in gas imports from Russia.
“If we have this pattern, then it’s quite challenging for energy because not only is it a little colder, but there’s less wind for wind power and less precipitation for hydropower,” she told the Financial Times.
Rabier said recent hurricanes over the Atlantic could bring about milder, wetter and windier weather in the short term. But cooler weather later in the year would coincide with atmospheric conditions known as La Niña, a weather pattern inferred from the cooling of the Pacific Ocean’s surface, causing changes in wind and precipitation patterns in different regions.
Weather in Europe is usually difficult to predict, as conditions are determined by several distant factors, including winds in the tropical stratosphere and surface pressure over the Atlantic.
Rabier said Europe was already in a fragile state after experiencing one of its hottest summers on record, with August temperatures of 1.7C above the 1991-2020 average and particularly dry soil conditions. The share of wind and hydropower in electricity generation in Europe has declined this summer due to hotter and drier weather.
More extreme weather events caused by global warming, such as tropical cyclones and heat waves, are more difficult to predict, the ECMWF chief said.
