Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Climate Impacts of Large-Scale Wind Farms as Parameterized in a Global Climate Model
SMHI, Research Department, Climate research - Rossby Centre.
2015 (English)In: Journal of Climate, ISSN 0894-8755, E-ISSN 1520-0442, Vol. 28, no 15, p. 6160-6180Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Resource type
Text
Abstract [en]

The local, regional, and global climate impacts of a large-scale global deployment of wind power in regionally high densities over land are investigated for a 60-yr period. Wind farms are represented as elevated momentum sinks as well as enhanced turbulence to represent turbine blade mixing in the Community Atmosphere Model, version 5 (CAM5), a global climate model. For a total installed capacity of 2.5 TW, to provide 16% of the world's projected electricity demand in 2050, minimal impacts are found both regionally and globally on temperature, sensible and latent heat fluxes, cloud, and precipitation. A mean near-surface warming of 0.12 +/- 0.07 K is seen within the wind farms, with a global-mean temperature change of -0.013 +/- 0.015 K. Impacts on wind speed and turbulence are more pronounced but largely confined within the wind farm areas. Increasing the wind farm areas to provide an installed capacity of 10 TW, or 65% of the 2050 electricity demand, causes further impacts; however, they remain slight overall. Maximum temperature changes are less than 0.5 K in the wind farm areas. To provide 20 TW of installed capacity, or 130% of the 2050 electricity demand, impacts both within the wind farms and beyond become more pronounced, with a doubling in turbine density. However, maximum temperature changes remain less than 0.7 K. Representing wind farms instead as an increase in surface roughness generally produces similar mean results; however, maximum changes increase, and influences on wind and turbulence are exaggerated. Overall, wind farm impacts are much weaker than those expected from greenhouse gas emissions, with very slight global-mean climate impacts.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2015. Vol. 28, no 15, p. 6160-6180
National Category
Climate Research
Research subject
Climate
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:smhi:diva-1960DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00245.1ISI: 000359532800017OAI: oai:DiVA.org:smhi-1960DiVA, id: diva2:923713
Available from: 2016-04-27 Created: 2016-03-03 Last updated: 2017-11-30Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full text

Authority records

Fitch, Anna

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Fitch, Anna
By organisation
Climate research - Rossby Centre
In the same journal
Journal of Climate
Climate Research

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 159 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf