The writer is a science commentatorWe tend to think of an extreme weather event as a moment of high drama. It is the waist-deep flood, the perishing heatwave or the famine-inducing drought.
One climatic extreme, called a wind drought, has largely escaped attention, perhaps because it is the very absence of drama. A wind drought — a prolonged period of slow wind — happened in Europe in summer 2021, with some countries recording their lowest wind speeds for decades.
The slowdown may have been due partly to natural variability but also tallied with predictions that climate change will cause wind speeds to drop over the long term, a phenomenon known as “global stilling”. As wind power spins its way into the European energy mix, operators will need to plan how to keep the lights on in a warming world girdled by lazy winds.