CLIMATE CHANGE AND

ITS IMPACT ON WIND

RESOURCE
Supervisor Gregorio Iglesias

Liam Murphy 113501393

 • To determine the importance of this research for
use in the wind industry
• To determine a suitable area for analyses
• To carry out a literature review of previous
studies into climate effects on the wind resource
in order to determine:
• Method of analyses
• Results for the selected region
Objectives • Known and unknown sources of error

• Propose an in-depth methodology which

accounts for sources of error in previous work to
be completed during the dissertation
Europe’s Offshore Wind
Industry
• Existing - 25GW at end of 2020, 79% in the North Sea
• In Production
• Largest fixed bottom wind farm totalling 3.6GW
• Largest Floating farm totalling 88MW, 140km off west
coast of Norway

• 2030 Targets
• 118GW by 2030

• As of 2020 only 21% of target reached

• Rate of installation must increase from 3GW/year to
11GW/year by 2026
• As LCOE associated with offshore wind, especially floating,
decreases this will become more feasible
 Figure: Breakdown by sea basin and country of 450GW of offshore
wind

Figure: Relative LCOE for offshore wind in the North Seas assuming
2030 costs
 Climate Change
Analysis
• CMIP6 – Coupled Model Intercomparison
Project
• Use Global Climate Models (GCMs) to
simulate past present and future climates
• Combines representative concentration
pathways (RCPs) and shared
socioeconomic pathways (SSPs)

Figure: Overview of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) representing combination

of challenges to mitigation and adaptation
Europe’s Climate Analysis – CMIP6

Figure: Median differences between baseline historical and end of decade period for near
surface wind speed (left) and 100m wind speeds (right)
 Sources of Error
• Findings do not have a high degree of certainty

• Low Resolution GCMs

- Orographic Features not represented over land
- Not an influential factor over water

• Comparison Timeline
- Conclusions made attribute all changes in the wind resource to
the forcing scenario
- Fails to consider the natural long-term variability which may
occur

• Inherent Uncertainties
- GCMs have inherent uncertainties given the incomplete
understanding of all natural systems influencing the climate
- Variability may be amplified in later time periods given the
compounding effect of these inherent uncertainties overtime
 Climate Variations

• North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)

discovered in the late 19th century
• Multidecadal (~50 year), interdecadal
(~20 year) and decadal (~10 year) have
been discovered
• GCMs have replicated oscillations to
varying degrees of success
o Some disagreement amongst the
science community
o However these have been based on
CMIP5, CMIP6 may better represent
Figure: Observed AMO index, showing anomalies over the patterns although studies don’t
North Atlantic basin currently exist examining this
Figure: Anomalies of the decadal mean 10-m wind speeds for the winter months, from 1979 –
2018
Novel Analysis Approach Overview
• Analysis of 3 scenarios – SSP1 – 1.9, SSP2 -4.5, SSP3 – 7.0
• Region of analyses specifically in the Northern Seas region
• Long term changes in wind climate will be analysed from 2025 – 2100 in 15 year
increments
• A long term period (2085-2100) will be compared to a mid-term period chosen
depending on findings from the initial analysis
• These time periods will be compared with the baseline scenario (SSP1 -1.9) which
will act as a projection of the current climate to determine the effect of
anthropogenic climate change whilst avoiding the influence of climate oscillations
• This work will be carried out with the use of a multi-model ensemble (MME)
 Chosen region
• Includes all the northern
seas
• Focus solely on offshore
region
• Avoids negative effect of
orographic features on
findings

Figure: Proposed Region for Climate Analysis showing the

current pipeline of offshore wind development
 Chosen Scenarios
• Baseline Scenario – SSP1 -1.9
- Describes a world that fully embraces that fully embraces and
implements a transition away from fossil fuels
- Act as projection of current climate into the future
- Peak increase of 0.3°C in 2040 and returning close to present day
values close to 2100

• Intermediate Scenario– SSP2 -4.5

- Most realistic scenario
- Describes a slow but steady transition away from fossil fuels that
is uneven around the world
- Leads to global mean temperature of 2.7°C by 2100

• Worst Case Scenario– SSP3 -7.0

- Scenario where regional conflict leads to energy security being
the primary focus
- Russia – Ukraine conflict highlights this scenario
- Leads to global mean temperature of 4.15°C by 2100

• Previous Studies
Figure: Trajectories of global mean temperature - Utilised SSP5 as a worst-case scenario
- SSP5 indicates a future fully reliant on fossil fuels and therefore
doesn’t propose a thriving wind industry
 Multi-model Ensemble Approach (MME)
• Data used will be near surface wind speed data
• 18 GCMs in CMIP6 will analysed for their accuracy in
the specific region against historical data
• Models will be remapped into a 1.0°x1.0° grid using
first-order conservative remapping
• Most accurate models will be combined into a multi-
model ensemble using an unweighted approach
Figure: Demonstration of the remapping of a
• This MME will be used as a best guest projection of
source (D and E) grid into a destination grid
(A, B and C) future changes in the climate
DATA ANALYSIS
METHODOLOGY
 Long Term Variability Analysis
15-year increments from
2025 -2100
This will allow long term
patterns or variations to be
discerned
Figure: Observed AMO index, showing anomalies over the
North Atlantic basin
Baseline scenario will be
used to make this
determination
Wind power density
examined as a percentage
difference from the mean of
the entire 75-year period
Patterns found in the
baseline scenario will be
used to choose the mid
term period to compare
with the 2085-2100 long
term period
Underlying natural
variability is expected to be
shared amongst all scenario
therefore this method will
limit its influence on the
subsequent results
Wind Resource Analysis
• Mean power density and seasonal variation to be examined for all scenarios
• Variability determined using the coefficient of variation (COV)

• Involves comparing near, mid and long term periods to determine how the wind
resource has changed for each scenario
• Baseline line scenario should show stable results for all time periods if truly
reflective of todays climate
• If COV increases in a similar trend over time to the stronger forcing scenarios,
impact of inherent uncertainties may be influencing results
Anthropogenic effect on Wind Resource

Intermediate and worst case

scenarios will be compared with For example: SSP3-7.0 2085-2100
baseline as a percentage difference will be compared with SSP1-1.9
for seasonal and annual variability, 2085-2100
and power density

These results may be compared

with the previous studies
Intended to limit effect of natural
mentioned to fully understand how
variability on the results
this approach found different or
similar results
 • Dissertation Intention
• To provide improved data analyses methodology to
existing studies
• To determine whether results found in this study align

Conclusion with that of existing studies

• To provide useful information to the offshore wind
industry when examining areas of interest for
development
QUESTIONS