Wind hazard in the alpine zone: a case study in Alberta, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Strong winds can be a dominant characteristic of the climate in the alpine biogeographic zone and can reach speeds capable of causing people to lose balance or even blowing them over. However, in contrast to urban settings, where a considerable body of literature has examined mechanical effects of wind on people, in alpine zones the hazard associated with wind is almost entirely based on anecdotal evidence and remains largely unquantified. In this article we use archival weather station data to determine the wind hazard in the alpine zone above treeline (2543m amsl) along a popular hiking trail in the Kananaskis region of Alberta, Canada. Drawing on pedestrian wind research, we define hazardous wind at this location as any recorded wind speed >22.5ms−1. We assess wind hazard based on hourly wind speed and daily maximum gust speed for the periods 2000–2013 and 2008–2013, respectively. Results indicate that hazardous winds are almost always southwesterly, consistent with the prevailing wind, and can occur at any time of the year, but are most common in autumn and winter. Daily maximum gusts >22.5ms−1 occurred every other day on average, while hourly wind speed >22.5ms−1 occurred for 1.3–6.4% of the year. Also noteworthy is that category 1 and 2 hurricane‐level wind speeds (33–42 and 43–49ms−1, respectively) were recorded at this site. The peak of category 1 wind speeds occurred in 2011 (103h in total or 1.2% of the year), while the peak in category 2 wind speeds occurred in 2009 (10h total or 0.1% of the year). A review of synoptic conditions during strong wind events suggests they are likely driven by downslope winds associated with mountain wave amplification and lee cyclogenesis. Overall, this study serves as an example to demonstrate that wind hazard in the alpine zone can be considerable and should be assessed in greater detail at all locations where people are likely to encounter strong winds.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".