Using 3DVAR data assimilation to measure offshore wind energy potential at different turbine heights in the West Mediterranean

In this article, offshore wind energy potential is measured around the Iberian Mediterranean coast and the Balearic Islands using the WRF meteorological model without 3DVAR data assimilation (the N simulation) and with 3DVAR data assimilation (the D simulation). Both simulations have been checked against the observations of six buoys and a spatially distributed analysis of wind based on satellite data (second version of Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform, CCMPv2), and compared with ERA-Interim (ERAI). Three statistical indicators have been used: Pearson’s correlation, root mean square error and the ratio of standard deviations. The simulation with data assimilation provides the best fit, and it is as good as ERAI, in many cases at a 95% confidence level. Although ERAI is the best model, in the spatially distributed evaluation versus CCMPv2 the D simulation has more consistent indicators than ERAI near the buoys. Additionally, our simulation’s spatial resolution is five times higher than ERAI. Finally, regarding the estimation of wind energy potential, we have represented the annual and seasonal capacity factor maps over the study area, and our results have identified two areas of high potential to the north of Menorca and at Cabo Begur, where the wind energy potential has been estimated for three turbines at different heights according to the simulation with data assimilation.This work has been funded by the Spanish Government’s MINECO project CGL2016-76561-R (MINECO/FEDER EU), the University of theBasque Country (project GIU14/03) and the Basque Government (Elkartek 2017 INFORMAR project). SJGR is supported by a FPIPredoctoral Research Grant (MINECO, BES-2014-069977). The ECMWFERA-Interim data used in this study have been obtained from the ECMWF-MARS Data Server thanks to agreements with ECMWF and AEMET. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Spanish Port Authorities (Puertos del Estado) for kindly providing data for thisstudy. The computational resources used in the project were providedby I2BASQUE. The authors thank the creators of the WRF/ARW and WRFDA systems for making them freely available to the community. NOAA_OI_SST_V2 data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD,Boulder, Colorado, USA, through their web-site athttp://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/was used in this paper. National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Weather Service/NOAA/U.S.Department of Commerce. 2008, updated daily. NCEP ADP GlobalUpper Air and Surface Weather Observations (PREPBUFR format), May1997–Continuing. Research Data Archive at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory.http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds337.0/were used. All thecalculations have been carried out in the framework of R Core Team(2016). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. RFoundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URLhttps://www.R-project.org/

Numerical simulations of the impacts of mountain on oasis effects in arid Central Asia

The oases in the mountain-basin systems of Central Asia are extremely fragile. Investigating oasis effects and oasis-desert interactions is important for understanding the ecological stability of oases. However, previous studies have been performed only in oasis-desert environments and have not considered the impacts of mountains. In this study, oasis effects were explored in the context of mountain effects in the northern Tianshan Mountains (NTM) using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Four numerical simulations are performed. The def simulation uses the default terrestrial datasets provided by the WRF model. The mod simulation uses actual terrestrial datasets from satellite products. The non-oasis simulation is a scenario simulation in which oasis areas are replaced by desert conditions, while all other conditions are the same as the mod simulation. Finally, the non-mountain simulation is a scenario simulation in which the elevation values of all grids are set to a constant value of 300 m, while all other conditions are the same as in the mod simulation. The mod simulation agrees well with near-surface measurements of temperature, relative humidity and latent heat flux. The Tianshan Mountains exert a cooling and wetting effects in the NTM region. The oasis breeze circulation (OBC) between oases and the deserts is counteracted by the stronger background circulation. Thus, the self-supporting mechanism of oases originating from the OBC plays a limited role in maintaining the ecological stability of oases in this mountain-basin system. However, the mountain wind causes the cold-wet'' island effects of the oases to extend into the oasis-desert transition zone at night, which is beneficial for plants in the transition region

Seasonal Correction of Offshore Wind Energy Potential due to Air Density: Case of the Iberian Peninsula

A constant value of air density based on its annual average value at a given location is commonly used for the computation of the annual energy production in wind industry. Thus, the correction required in the estimation of daily, monthly or seasonal wind energy production, due to the use of air density, is ordinarily omitted in existing literature. The general method, based on the implementation of the wind speed’s Weibull distribution over the power curve of the turbine, omits it if the power curve is not corrected according to the air density of the site. In this study, the seasonal variation of air density was shown to be highly relevant for the computation of offshore wind energy potential around the Iberian Peninsula. If the temperature, pressure, and moisture are taken into account, the wind power density and turbine capacity factor corrections derived from these variations are also significant. In order to demonstrate this, the advanced Weather Research and Forecasting mesoscale Model (WRF) using data assimilation was executed in the study area to obtain a spatial representation of these corrections. According to the results, the wind power density, estimated by taking into account the air density correction, exhibits a difference of 8% between summer and winter, compared with that estimated without the density correction. This implies that seasonal capacity factor estimation corrections of up to 1% in percentage points are necessary for wind turbines mainly for summer and winter, due to air density changes.This work has been funded by the Spanish Government’s MINECO project CGL2016-76561-R (AEI/FEDER EU) and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU funded project GIU17/02). The ECMWF ERA-Interim data used in this study have been obtained from the ECMWF-MARS Data Server. The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Spanish Port Authorities (Puertos del Estado) for being kind enough to provide data for this study. The computational resources used in the project were provided by I2BASQUE. The authors thank the creators of the WRF/ARW and WRFDA systems for making them freely available to the community. NOAA_OI_SST_V2 data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, through their web-site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/ were used in this paper. National Centres for Environmental Prediction/National Weather Service/NOAA/U.S. Department of Commerce. 2008, updated daily. NCEP ADP Global Upper Air and Surface Weather Observations (PREPBUFR format), May 1997—continuing. Research Data Archive at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds337.0/ were used. All the calculations have been carried out in the framework of R Core Team (2016). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. https://www.R-project.org

Efficient dynamical downscaling of general circulation models using continuous data assimilation

Continuous data assimilation (CDA) is successfully implemented for the first time for efficient dynamical downscaling of a global atmospheric reanalysis. A comparison of the performance of CDA with the standard grid and spectral nudging techniques for representing long- and short-scale features in the downscaled fields using the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model is further presented and analyzed. The WRF model is configured at 25km horizontal resolution and is driven by 250km initial and boundary conditions from NCEP/NCAR reanalysis fields. Downscaling experiments are performed over a one-month period in January, 2016. The similarity metric is used to evaluate the performance of the downscaling methods for large and small scales. Similarity results are compared for the outputs of the WRF model with different downscaling techniques, NCEP reanalysis, and Final Analysis. Both spectral nudging and CDA describe better the small-scale features compared to grid nudging. The choice of the wave number is critical in spectral nudging; increasing the number of retained frequencies generally produced better small-scale features, but only up to a certain threshold after which its solution gradually became closer to grid nudging. CDA maintains the balance of the large- and small-scale features similar to that of the best simulation achieved by the best spectral nudging configuration, without the need of a spectral decomposition. The different downscaled atmospheric variables, including rainfall distribution, with CDA is most consistent with the observations. The Brier skill score values further indicate that the added value of CDA is distributed over the entire model domain. The overall results clearly suggest that CDA provides an efficient new approach for dynamical downscaling by maintaining better balance between the global model and the downscaled fields

The Consequences of Air Density Variations over Northeastern Scotland for Offshore Wind Energy Potential

Hywind-Scotland is a wind farm in Scotland that for many reasons is at the leading edge of technology and is located at a paradigmatic study area for offshore wind energy assessment. The objective of this paper is to compute the Capacity Factor ( CF ) changes and instantaneous power generation changes due to seasonal and hourly fluctuations in air density. For that reason, the novel ERA5 reanalysis is used as a source of temperature, pressure, and wind speed data. Seasonal results for winter show that CF values increase by 3% due to low temperatures and denser air, with economical profit consequences of tens of thousands (US$). Hourly results show variations of 7% in air density and of 26% in power generation via FAST simulations, emphasizing the need to include air density in short-term wind energy studying.This work was financially supported by the Spanish Government through the MINECO project CGL2016-76561-R, (MINECO/ERDF, UE) and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, GIU 17/002). ERA5 hindcast data were downloaded at no cost from the Copernicus Climate Data Store. All the calculations and plots were made using R: https://www.r-project.org

Numerical simulations of mountain winds in an alpine valley

The meteorological model WRF is used to investigate the wind circulation in Valle Camonica, Italy, an alpine valley that includes a large subalpine lake. The aim was to obtain the information necessary to evaluate the wind potential of this area and, from a methodological point of view, to suggest how numerical modeling can be used to locate the most interesting spots for wind exploitation. Two simulations are carried out in order to analyze typical scenarios occurring in the valley. In the first one, the diurnal cycle of thermally-induced winds generated by the heating-cooling of the mountain range encircling the valley is analyzed. The results show that the mountain slopes strongly affect the low-level winds during both daytime and nighttime, and that the correct setting of the lake temperature improves the quality of the meteorological fields provided by WRF significantly. The second simulation deals with an event of strong downslope winds caused by the passage of a cold front. Comparisons between simulated and measured wind speed, direction and air temperature are also shown

Evaluation of WRF-Sfire Performance with Field Observations from the FireFlux experiment

This study uses in-situ measurements collected during the FireFlux field experiment to evaluate and improve the performance of coupled atmosphere-fire model WRF-Sfire. The simulation by WRF-Sfire of the experimental burn shows that WRF-Sfire is capable of providing realistic head fire rate-of-spread and the vertical temperature structure of the fire plume, and, up to 10 m above ground level, fire-induced surface flow and vertical velocities within the plume. The model captured the changes in wind speed and direction before, during, and after fire front passage, along with arrival times of wind speed, temperature, and updraft maximae, at the two instrumented flux towers used in FireFlux. The model overestimated vertical velocities and underestimated horizontal wind speeds measured at tower heights above the 10 m, and it is hypothesized that the limited model resolution over estimated the fire front depth, leading to too high a heat release and, subsequently, too strong an updraft. However, on the whole, WRF-Sfire fire plume behavior is consistent with the interpretation of FireFlux observations. The study suggests optimal experimental pre-planning, design, and execution of future field campaigns that are needed for further coupled atmosphere-fire model development and evaluation

Influence of input climatic data on simulations of annual energy needs of a building: energyplus and WRF modeling for a case study in Rome (Italy)

The simulation of the energy consumptions in an hourly regime is necessary in order to perform calculations on residential buildings of particular relevance for volume or for architectural features. In such cases, the simplified methodology provided by the regulations may be inadequate, and the use of software like EnergyPlus is needed. To obtain reliable results, usually, significant time is spent on the meticulous insertion of the geometrical inputs of the building, together with the properties of the envelope materials and systems. Less attention is paid to the climate database. The databases available on the EnergyPlus website refer to airports located in rural areas near major cities. If the building to be simulated is located in a metropolitan area, it may be affected by the local heat island, and the database used as input to the software should take this phenomenon into account. To this end, it is useful to use a meteorological model such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to construct an appropriate input climate file. A case study based on a building located in the city center of Rome (Italy) shows that, if the climatic forcing linked to the heat island is not considered, the estimated consumption due to the cooling is underestimated by 35–50%. In particular, the analysis and the seasonal comparison between the energy needs of the building simulated by EnergyPlus, with the climatic inputs related to two airports in the rural area of Rome and with the inputs provided by the WRF model related to the center of Rome, show discrepancies of about (i) WRF vs. Fiumicino (FCO): Δ = −3.48% for heating, Δ = 49.25% for cooling; (ii) WRF vs. Ciampino (CIA): Δ = −7.38% for heating, Δ = +35.52% for cooling