Addressing Climate Change in Wind Engineering Standards

US wind loading regulations and design criteria generally are based on the ASCE 7 -2010 Standard Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures.  Its wind speed provisions are based on probabilistic estimates inferred from records of extreme wind velocities, data pertaining to hurricane climatological parameters, and observed damages.                                         The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (SREX 2012) assigned a limited degree of confidence to the estimation of climate change effects on extreme winds.  Nevertheless, the Measurement Science R&D Roadmap Workshop for Windstorm and Coastal Inundation Impact Reduction held in Reston, VA in June of 2012 identified, among 31 most relevant research topics, the need to include in wind hazard mapping a way to modify wind speeds based on climate change. Workshop participants noted that wind no methodology or standard exists now for mapping future conditions as affected by climate change, and that no consensus exists for what constitutes a future condition as affected by climate change.                                                    In an article in the magazine Foreign Affairs (11/09/2012), MIT Professor K. Emanuel argued that the Fukushima disaster could have been averted if the design had been based not on an 8.3 magnitude earthquake -- the largest earthquake that scientists conservatively estimated might be possible, -- but rather on a criterion that would have been conservative from a risk management point of view; and that it would have made more sense to build in a margin of error that might have withstood the magnitude 9.0 quake that did occur.                                                             Climate, weather and engineering research will be necessary to obtain credible models for future extreme winds. Given current knowledge uncertainties with respect to wind climate effects, the profession should weigh the extent to which it would be appropriate to select design wind speeds that would make allowance for the imperfection of engineering predictions,