Compound winter low-wind and cold events impacting the French electricity system: observed evolution and role of large-scale circulation

Collet, François; Bador, Margot; Boé, Julien; Dubus, Laurent; Jourdier, Bénédicte

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-843-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-843-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-843-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 2

Research article

|

25 Feb 2025

Research article |

| 25 Feb 2025

Compound winter low-wind and cold events impacting the French electricity system: observed evolution and role of large-scale circulation

François Collet, Margot Bador, Julien Boé, Laurent Dubus, and Bénédicte Jourdier

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-843-2025-supplement

Data sets

The ERA5 global reanalysis (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels?tab=overview) H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3803

The Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/M2T1NXLND_5.12.4/summary) R. Gelaro et al. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3338

An Ensemble Version of the E-OBS Temperature and Precipitation Data Sets (https://www.ecad.eu/download/ensembles/download.php) R. C. Cornes et al. https://doi.org/10.1029/2017JD028200

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Short summary

Our aim is to characterize the observed evolution of compound winter low-wind and cold events impacting the French electricity system. The frequency of compound events exhibits a decrease over the 1950–2022 period, which is likely due to a decrease in cold days. Large-scale atmospheric circulation is an important driver of compound event occurrence and has likely contributed to the decrease in cold days, while we cannot draw conclusions on its influence on the decrease in compound events.