Are observed past events enough to understand the impact of low wind events on energy supply?

At the latest Wind Europe WindTech conference, Climate Scale presented the results of an analysis of the 2021 UK/Western Europe wind drought episode, exploring its links with European circulation patterns and the accelerating warming of the higher latitudes (Arctic amplification).

‍

Following up on the same question, we asked our science director  @ana to comment a recent  paper that brings some light on this recurrent question: Variability in North Sea wind energy and the potential for prolonged winter wind drought, Kay et al

‍

• This paper focuses on the North Sea and on the winter season, given the occurrence of weather patterns that risk security of supply in the region. The paper quantifies the chances of wind drought events in the current climate by using a large ensemble of initialized climate model simulations. 

The advantage of this approach is that, by treating model ensemble members as different, but equally plausible versions of the past and pooling them, the sample size of historical weather events can be increased to explore the characteristics of rare extreme events (see https://unseen-open.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Whats-unseen.html#).

• A wind drought event is defined as a week when the weekly mean wind speed is smaller than the 20th percentile of the reanalysis daily wind speeds over the North Sea. With this choice of threshold and some simplifying assumptions, it is estimated that the average wind power over the broad North Sea region during a wind drought week would be approximately half of that expected from a typical winter week.
• The analysis concludes that more severe wind drought episodes than experienced to date are possible in the current climate. Wind droughts of up to two consecutive weeks have been observed. However the model indicates a 1-in-40 chance of three or more continuous weeks of wind drought each winter, with the single most prolonged simulated event lasting 5 weeks. 

‍

Large ensembles of initialized climate model simulations are a useful tool to sample events that were not observed in the past but are physically plausible. Similarly, large ensembles of climate model projections allow us to explore the projected changes in recurrence and/or intensity of critical events such as wind droughts. 

‍

In Climate Scale we are working with these tools to understand what is the likelihood of these and other anomalous wind conditions happening in a 1.5C or more warmer World. 

‍

We offer, along with our climate tool that enables climate physical risks assessment, a series of customized advanced analysis. Get in touch to discuss potential collaborations!

#climatechange #climaterisks #windpower #winddrought #offshorewind #climatedata #climatemodels #climateunderstaning #whatmightbepossible

‍