’Rapid increase’ in global wind speeds

Wind speeds across the globe have increased rapidly over the past decade signalling good news for the renewable energy industry, scientists say. New findings have shown that a worrying trend of decreasing wind speeds since the 1970s, a phenomenon known as global terrestrial stilling, has now been reversed with a significant increase observed since 2010. Slower wind speeds, which had been suggested to continue over the coming decades, had been of significant concern to the booming renewable energy industry who saw this as a threat to potential power generation. By the end of 2018, the total capacity of wind turbines installed worldwide had reached 597 gigawatts, meeting nearly 6 per cent of the world's electricity demand. The new findings have been published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. In the study the international team, including a Cardiff University scientist, analysed data taken between 1978 and 2017 from over 9,000 weather stations across Europe, North America and Asia. The analysis showed that global mean annual wind speed decreased significantly at a rate of 2.3 per cent per decade during the first three decades, beginning from 1978.