Climate change may be causing long-term global wind speeds to slow down, a shift that will likely lead to a dangerous rise in local temperatures, worsening air pollution and disruption to renewable energy systems, Mongabay writer Sean Mowbray reported.

A warming atmosphere is likely weakening the forces that govern wind speeds, leading to more frequent wind droughts or periods when air sits still for long stretches of time, a phenomenon known as “global stilling.”

“What we’ve seen is that from the 1960s through to around 2010, wind speeds have been kind of generally slowing down,” Hannah Bloomfield at Newcastle University in the U.K. told Mowbray.

“Interestingly, since 2010 winds have actually sped up again,” Bloomfield added. “But when we look forward using climate models, and then look far forward into the future, our average wind speeds globally are expected to decline.”

Among scientists, there’s considerable debate and uncertainty around these calculations and projections, which are made based on models. Forecasting is difficult as the interactions that influence global climate patterns are incredibly complex.

For example, while wind globally is slowing, extreme wind events like Category 5 Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean, are becoming more frequent.

However, if average global wind speeds do decline long term, it could cause potential disruptions to renewable energy systems worldwide. Roughly 20% of global wind turbines are located in regions at high risk of future record-breaking wind droughts.

In Europe, projections suggest energy production could decrease by up to 10% by the year 2100 as a result of reduced power output from wind turbines.

“We can get periods of time where you have particularly low winds that can obviously affect the delivery of power if you’re relying on wind energy,” oceanographer Matthew England, a researcher at the University of New South Wales, Australia, who has been studying these interactions, told Mowbray.

“But weak winds under a global warming scenario are also particularly dangerous for heat waves,” he added. When air becomes stagnant, it prevents air pollution from dispersing and can create heat domes — a region of intense, persistent heat.

“Under climate change, we’re getting these marine heat waves playing out because of ocean warming and extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases,” England said. “But they get particularly bad and nasty if the winds are weak.”

Read the full story by Sean Mowbray here.

Banner image: Wind turbines installed off the coast of Rhode Island, U.S. Image by Joan Sullivan via Climate Visuals (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).