Abstract
The centennial trends in the surface wind speed over North America are deduced from global climate model simulations in the Climate Model Intercomparison Project—Phase 5 (CMIP5) archive. Using the 21st century simulations under the RCP 8.5 scenario of greenhouse gas emissions, 5–10 percent increases per century in the 10 m wind speed are found over Central and East-Central United States, the Californian Coast, and the South and East Coasts of the USA in winter. In summer, climate models projected decreases in the wind speed ranging from 5 to 10 percent per century over the same coastal regions. These projected changes in the surface wind speed are moderate and imply that the current estimate of wind power potential for North America based on present-day climatology will not be significantly changed by the greenhouse gas forcing in the coming decades.
Highlights
The rapid technological developments in the past decade have established wind energy as one of the major alternatives to fossil-fuel based energy
In winter when the climatological surface wind is stronger overall, we find a moderate increase of 5–10% of the near surface wind speed over the Central and North-Central USA and the coastal regions in California and along the South and East Coasts of the USA
Using 5 models from the Climate Model Intercomparison Project—Phase 5 (CMIP5) archive and comparing the representative concentration pathways (RCP) 8.5 runs with historical runs, moderate centennial trends in the 10 m wind speed are projected over North America
Summary
The rapid technological developments in the past decade have established wind energy as one of the major alternatives to fossil-fuel based energy. The potential of wind power generation in the United States alone, including off-shore and on-shore capacity, is estimated to be about 15000 GW (e.g., Lopez et al [1]) This estimate generally does not take into account future climate changes which may alter the pattern and strength of near-surface wind at desirable locations for wind farms (Freedman et al [2], Ren [3]). Pryor and Barthelmie [8] analyzed the regional model simulations in NARCAAP (Mearns et al [9]), constrained by the global model projections from CMIP3 (Meehl et al [10]), to conclude that GHG-induced climate change will not significantly affect wind power potential in the United States in the coming decades. Regional climate changes due to land-use changes (e.g., urbanization) or even the influence of large-scale wind farms (e.g., Keith et al [11] and Adams and Keith [12]) are not covered by the 21st century scenarios in CMIP5 and are not considered in this work.
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