The new redesigned Wind Trends Bulletin has expanded from Europe, India and North America to include South America, Africa and the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania.
In addition to new regions, AWS Truepower has updated its methodology in creating the anomaly maps, which improves its global accuracy. The ERA-Interim Reanalysis (Dee, D. P., et al, 2011) will now be used as the baseline for studying the long-term changes in wind speed. Key findings for Q1 2013 include:
- Winds were generally below normal across the northern latitudes of North America and Eurasia, the west coast of the United States, the Sahara region of Africa, southern Argentina and Chile, and New Zealand.
- Winds were well above normal across southern Europe and North Africa, as well as in southern Africa, eastern Australia, and most of South America.
- The largest wind speed anomalies of the quarter - both positive and negative - were found in Europe and North Africa, a pattern that can be explained in part by the Arctic Oscillation (AO).