Wind, Ice and Snow Load Impacts on Infrastructure and the Natural Environment (WISELINE)

Coordinator: Harold Mc Innes, Norwegian Meteorological Institute (NBIO)
Financier: Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO)
Partners: Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET), Dept. of Geosciences, University of Oslo (UiO), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Kjeller Vindteknikk AS (KVT), Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute (NFLI). Associate partners: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
Time period: 2015-2018

The objective of WISELINE is to improve predictions and design values of atmospheric icing, heavy snowfall and damaging winds in the current climate, and to provide quantitative estimates of changes in these paramaters in the future, for evaluating the changing risks of forest wind throw and disruption of technical infrastructures, in particular the electric power grid.

The goals are to 1/ Inprove the description of physical processes in the atmospheric models, enabling a better quantification of icing and heavy snowfall events; 2/ Establish improved post-processing and bias-correction methods for better assessment of icing and damaging winds that will serve as input to impact models for analysis of icing on electricity transmission lines and wind-throw and breakage in forest stands in future climate. 3/ Apply the improved physical parameterizations, post-processing tools and bias correction methods, carry out high-resolution simulationsof icing conditions and damaging winds in future climates; 4/ Develop pos-processing tools that can enable users to make better decisions with respect to future weather challenges.