Abstract
By using a limited-area model (LAM) in combination with the scale-selective data assimilation (SSDA) approach, wind energy resources in the contiguous United States (CONUS) were downscaled from IPCC CCSM3 global model projections for both current and future climate conditions. An assessment of climate change impacts on wind energy resources in the CONUS region was then conducted. Based on the downscaling results, when projecting into future climate under IPCC’s A1B scenario, the average annual wind speed experiences an overall shift across the CONUS region. From the current climate to the 2040s, the average annual wind speed is expected to increase from 0.1 to 0.2 m s−1over the Great Plains, Northern Great Lakes Region, and Southwestern United States located southwest of the Rocky Mountains. When projecting into the 2090s from current climate, there is an overall increase in the Great Plains Region and Southwestern United States located southwest of the Rockies with a mean wind speed increase between 0 and 0.1 m s−1, while, the Northern Great Lakes Region experiences an even greater increase from current climate to 2090s than over the first few decades with an increase of mean wind speed from 0.1 to 0.4 m s−1.
Highlights
The specific purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of climate change on wind energy resources over the continental United States (CONUS)
Regional dynamical downscaling of global climate models is beneficial due to its higher spatial resolution and better capturing of the regional scale features that the global models cannot
The new dynamical downscaling approach of scale-selective data assimilation (SSDA) in addition to the traditional sponge zone relaxation downscaling approach was introduced in this study for wind energy resource downscaling in the CONUS, which assimilates large-scale information from the global model to the limited-area model (LAM), combining the merits of both the global and the regional models
Summary
The specific purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of climate change on wind energy resources over the continental United States (CONUS). Large-scale wind components above the 13th sigma level (about 850 hPa) from the global model are assimilated into the LAM every 2 days through the SSDA procedure, directly driving the LAM from the model domain interior This practice of only constraining large-scale fields above the PBL (e.g., [12]) allows the LAM to adjust its low-level dynamics based on its own regional topography and land-sea characteristics. >400 with relatively high temporal (3 hour) and spatial (32 km) resolution for North America and nearby land masses and oceans from the time period of October 1978 to the present Another data set used to validate the wind energy resource downscaling under current climate in this study comes from the surface wind measurements from various surface observation platforms collected by NCDC. Classes 3 to 7 are the 5 main classes looked at since the first and second classes are marginal and not suitable for wind energy development on a utility scale
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