Projections of offshore wind energy and wave climate in Guangdong’s nearshore area using CMIP6 simulations

Abstract

A good knowledge of future coastal wind and wave resources in the context of climate change is crucial for the construction of offshore wind farms. In this study, the dataset of the coupled model intercomparison project phase 6 (CMIP6) was used to evaluate the future wind resources and wave conditions in the nearshore area of Guangdong of China. The long short-term memory (LSTM) algorithm was used to develop a statistical downscaling method to render high spatial resolution data. The Copula function was used to construct the joint probability distribution function. The key findings were as follows. First, over the whole Guangdong coastal area, the projection of wind speed (<i>H</i>_s) shows a generally increasing trend, the wave height (<i>W</i>_s) remains almost unchanged, and the growth is particularly pronounced in the western area. Second, it is clear that the joint probability distribution is less spread in the late 21^st century; therefore, the distribution of wind energy will also be more suitable for the optimal operating of wind turbines. Third, the joint probability distribution results show that large wind and wave conditions possibly occur at the same time, which must be considered when determining worst-case conditions. Future work is required to use more models and scenarios from the ongoing CMIP6.