Impacts of accelerating deployment of offshore windfarms on near-surface climate.

ABSTRACT: The European Union has set the ambitious goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050, which has stimulated renewable energy production and accelerated the deployment of offshore wind energy in the North Sea. Here, a high-resolution regional climate model was used to investigate the impact on the sea surface climate of large-scale offshore wind farms that are proposed for the North Sea. The results show a significant reduction in the air-sea heat fluxes and a local, annual mean net cooling of the lower atmosphere in the wind farm areas down to more than 2.0 Wm^-2, due to a decrease in 10 m wind speed and turbulent kinetic energy and an increase in low-level clouds. Mean surface winds decreased by approximately 1 ms^-1 downstream of wind farms. Furthermore, an increase of ap

SUBMITTER: Akhtar N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9622722 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature