I have heard several people say there has been fewer and weaker seabreezes in WA in the last couple of years. To see if there is a pattern I looked at several people's top 5 tables in the GTC.
Sure enough there are far more speeds from 2009/2010 than I would have thought possible. Particularly true of Nautical miles where sustained strong winds are important. As kit gets better the top 5 tables should fill up with 2011 scores but this is not the case.
Is the wind falling all over AUS?
ooopppss
just found a long discussion this on the WA forum
Hey Evets, we have had a similar occurrence here in Sydney on our Northern Beaches. Back in the 80's and 90's Long Reef beach was the hub of Sydney windsurfing. It provided good consistent noreast seabreezes sometimes easily topping 25-35knots. Now, it is almost unheard of to get anything like that down there. A lot of people say it is because of the build up of higher rise buildings and physically just more dwellings blocking the effect of the cooling of the earth and the wind being sucked in. I don't know anything about the layout of Perth at all but I presume it is a growing city and so maybe this could be a similar scenario to what has happened here. In saying that I'm now going to go and read the discussion on the WA page to see what others are saying.
Hey Rexie,
have a look at this site for long range forecast & good explanations of crap winds of last couple of years (La Nina dominating the SOI)http://www.eldersweather.com.au/raindeciles.jsp?lc=n00&dc=..
To quote: "The La Nina gained strength during the last two months of 2011. The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) monthly value increased from 7.3 in October, to 13.8 for November and then to 23.0 in December. This December value was the highest recorded since the decay of the previous La Nina in autumn of 2011. This increase in the SOI values indicates a strengthening of the atmospheric response to cool sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific."
Warmer sea temp (& lesser land heat) also does not help because there is less differential, which means the land is not sucking enuff...
and we get very occasional on & off seabreezes.
Also BOM page "La Ni?a - Detailed Australian Analysis"
www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/lnlist/
which describes a case by case analysis of La Ni?a events since 1900.
Enjoy...
good stuff wineman.
there is another couple of very good documents published by the BOM and they specifically refer to seabreeze studies in NSW and touch a little on WA.
www.bom.gov.au/nsw/amfs/Sea-Breeze.shtml
www.bom.gov.au/nsw/amfs/More-on-Sea-Breeze.shtml
festivalofsails.com.au/regatta/weather
www.bom.gov.au/amm/docs/2003/dunsmuir.pdf
Bender, there was an interesting program yesterday on ABC about how climate change is effecting Bunbury. Basically it is heading towards a Geralton like climate. They didn't talk about wind..just heat and rainfall. But one can assume with the heat comes stronger seabreezes. The bad news is you'll have to wait 40 years for those Geralton like seabreezes..
