  We characterise the long-term variability of European near-surface wind
speeds using 142 years of data from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR),
and consider the potential of such long-baseline climate data sets for wind
energy applications. The low resolution of the 20CR would severely restrict its
use on its own for wind farm site-screening. We therefore perform a simple
statistical calibration to link it to the higher-resolution ERA-Interim data
set (ERAI), such that the adjusted 20CR data has the same wind speed
distribution at each location as ERAI during their common period. Using this
corrected 20CR data set, wind speeds and variability are characterised in terms
of the long-term mean, standard deviation, and corresponding trends. Many
regions of interest show extremely weak trends on century timescales, but
contain large multidecadal variability. Since reanalyses such as ERAI are often
used to provide the background climatology for wind farm site assessments, but
contain only a few decades of data, our results can be used as a way of
incorporating decadal-scale wind climate variability into such studies,
allowing investment risks for wind farms to be reduced.
