Identification

Title

Parameterization of wind farms in climate models

Abstract

For assessing the impacts of wind farms on regional climate, wind farms may be represented in climate models by an increase in aerodynamic roughness length. Studies employing this method have found near-surface temperature changes of 1–2 K over wind farm areas. By contrast, mesoscale and large-eddy simulations (LES), which represent wind farms as elevated sinks of momentum, generally showed temperature changes of less than 0.5 K. This study directly compares the two methods of representing wind farms in simulations of a strong diurnal cycle. Nearly the opposite wake structure is seen between the two methods, both during the day and at night. The sensible heat fluxes are generally exaggerated in the enhanced roughness approach, leading to much greater changes in temperature. Frequently, the two methods display the opposite sign in temperature change. Coarse resolution moderates the sensible heat fluxes but does not significantly improve the near-surface temperatures or low-level wind speed deficit. Since wind farm impacts modeled by the elevated momentum sink approach are similar to those seen in observations and from LES, the authors conclude that the increased surface roughness approach is not an appropriate option to represent wind farms or explore their impacts.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d79k4c4n

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-09-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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Conformity

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Use constraints

Copyright 2013 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact