Local Climate Change and Wind Gusts in Utqiagvik, Alaska: An Analysis of Wind Speed, Temperature, and Variability

Abstract

This study aims to assess and visualize changes in temperature, mean wind speed, and the variability of wind speed, whereby variability is defined as the standard deviation of hourly mean wind speed. The project evaluated meteorological data from Utqiagvik, Alaska, taken between 1994 and 2022. Multiple regression and linear regression techniques were used to identify which parameters are most strongly correlated with the variability of wind speed. The input variables, temperature and mean wind speed, were analyzed with respect to the output variable, wind sd. Elementary predictive models were developed to estimate wind sd conditions given a dataframe of temperatures and mean wind speed values. Results demonstrated a significant increase in wind sd over the study period for 11 of 12 months, while temperatures have increased for all months and mean wind speeds have not experienced any statistically significant change. Winter temperatures in Utqiagvik have increased more significantly than summer temperatures, indicating a seasonal disparity in regional warming that is supported by previous studies. Our findings suggest that wind sd is more strongly affected by temperature than by mean wind speeds, but temperature changes alone cannot fully explain why wind sd has increased in summer.