Winds of Change: Storms in the Euro-North Atlantic during the Holocene

Storms are a common feature of European winters, yet predictions of storminess (frequency and intensity) and storm track position are conflicting.

This stems from a lack of data, particularly from pre-instrumental times, limiting our understanding of natural drivers.

The aim of this four-year project is to understand drivers of storminess and storm track position in the Euro-North Atlantic over the Holocene (last 11 700-years).

This is achieved by producing new peat paleostorm records through novel methods (Computed Tomography and mid-infrared spectral analyses) and pooling them with existing records to build a transect from Spain (~40°N) to Norway (~70°N).

Along this transect we construct five regional storm stacks (RSS) by applying statistical tools to generate a continuous composite of storminess and effective humidity as well as time slices of increased storminess.

We then compare and contrast across our transect to (i) explore regional changes in past storm behaviour, particularly in the understudied north; (ii) chart past storm track movement; and (iii) test links to large scale ocean-atmosphere systems operating in the North Atlantic.

With this accumulated understanding, we then apply structural equation modelling to (iv) quantify the changing importance of different drivers of storminess, and their interactions, over time.

This information is critical to improving modelling efforts and mitigating against future changes in storminess in Europe.