Projection of global wind and solar resources over land in the 21st century

Abstract

This study modelled projected spatiotemporal changes in global wind and solar resources over land in the 21st century under the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 climate scenarios using an ensemble mean drawn from 11 Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models. These models’ performances were verified by comparing historical global near-surface wind speed and downward surface solar radiation over land. Compared to the baseline historical period 1985–2005, the distribution of relative projected changes in global wind and solar resources had great spatial and seasonal discrepancies. Under both climate scenarios, projected wind resources throughout the 21st century presented a decreasing trend in Asia and Europe but an increasing trend in the low-latitude Americas. In comparison, projected global solar resources over land generally showed an increasing trend throughout the 21st century, especially in Europe, eastern Asia, and eastern North America. Moreover, wind resources in the Americas had their most significant decrease and increase in January and July, respectively, while in Asia and Europe the decreasing trend as most prominent in January and October, respectively. The most significant increases in solar resources in the Americas, Asia, and Europe happened in October and July, respectively. Discrepancies between the variation trends of future global wind and solar resources suggest the complexity and nonlinearity of these resources’ responses to future climate change.