See: Study Says U.S. Winds Are Slowing (New York Times)A comprehensive intercomparison of historical wind speed trends over the contiguous USA is presented based on two observational data sets, four reanalysis data sets and output from two Regional Climate Models (RCMs). This research thus contributes to detection, quantification and attribution of temporal trends in wind speeds within the historical/contemporary climate, and provides an evaluation of the RCMs being used to develop future wind speed scenarios. Under the assumption that changes in wind climates are partly driven by variability and evolution of the global climate system, such changes should be manifest in direct observations, reanalysis products and RCMs. However, there are substantial differences in temporal trends derived from observational wind speed data, reanalysis productsnand RCMs... Read full study here: Wind speed trends over the contiguous USA (PDF; 2.3 MB)