title: Increasing large scale windstorm damage in Western, Central and Northern European forests, 1951-2010.
abstract: Using reports of forest losses caused directly by large scale windstorms (or primary damage, PD) from the European forest institute database (comprising 276 PD reports from 1951-2010), total growing stock (TGS) statistics of European forests and the daily North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, we identify a statistically significant change in storm intensity in Western, Central and Northern Europe (17 countries). Using the validated set of storms, we found that the year 1990 represents a change-point at which the average intensity of the most destructive storms indicated by PD/TGS > 0.08% increased by more than a factor of three. A likelihood ratio test provides strong evidence that the change-point represents a real shift in the statistical behaviour of the time series. All but one of the seven catastrophic storms (PD/TGS > 0.2%) occurred since 1990. Additionally, we detected a related decrease in September-November PD/TGS and an increase in December-February PD/TGS. Our analyses point to the possibility that the impact of climate change on the North Atlantic storms hitting Europe has started during the last two and half decades.
authors.affiliation: Finnish Meteorological Institute, P.O. Box 503, Helsinki, FI-00101, Finland.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gregow
authors.affiliation: Finnish Meteorological Institute, P.O. Box 503, Helsinki, FI-00101, Finland.|University of Eastern Finland, Department of Applied Physics, POB 1627, 70211 Kuopio, Finland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Laaksonen
authors.affiliation: Finnish Meteorological Institute, P.O. Box 503, Helsinki, FI-00101, Finland.
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Alper
mesh_terms: D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D005060:Europe; D065928:Forests; D014197:Trees; D014919:Wind