Title:
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Investigating the Effects of Pacific Sea Surface Temperatures on the Wind Drought of 2015 Over the United States
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Author:
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Lledó, Llorenç; Bellprat, Omar; Doblas-Reyes, Francisco J.; Soret, Albert
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Other authors:
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Barcelona Supercomputing Center |
Abstract:
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During the first quarter of 2015 the United States experienced a widespread and extended episode of low surface wind speeds. This episode had a strong impact on wind power generation. Some wind farms did not generate enough cash for their steady payments, and the value of some assets decreased. Although the wind industry expressed their concerns, the episode has not received much attention from the scientific community and remains weakly understood. In this paper we aim to fill this gap and advance understanding of the underlying processes at seasonal time scales. Using retrospective climate predictions, we find that high sea surface temperatures in the western tropical Pacific ocean associated with a strongly positive phase of the North Pacific Mode played a central role to establish and maintain those wind anomalies. In a more general way it has also been shown that interannual variability of wind speed over North America is not only dominated by El Niño/Southern Oscillation but also by other sea surface temperature variations in the tropical Pacific. This new knowledge can be useful for industry stakeholders to anticipate future periods of low wind speed. |
Abstract:
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This work was funded by the EU
projects S2S4E (GA 776787), EUCP
(GA 776613), CLIM4ENERGY
(C3S_441_Lot2_CEA), EUCLEIA
(GA 607085), INDECIS (GA 690462), and
MEDSCOPE (GA 690462). Omar Bellprat
has been funded by the European
Space Agency (ESA) Living Planet
Fellowship Programme under the
project VERITAS-CCI.We thank Daniel
Cabezón for helping and informing on
the wind drought episode and Javier
García-Serrano for the insights on the
interpretation of the physical processes.
All the analyses have been performed
using the statistical software R (R Core
Team, 2015). The startR and
s2dverification R packages have been
used to read data sets, compute EOFs,
and plot maps. Model output from the
numerical experiments can be accessed
through EUDAT facilities at the link
http://doi.org/10.23728/b2share.71078
a8618414e9b906cfa6bb7d2cdab. The
reanalysis data and models used are
listed in the references. We also
acknowledge Javier Vegas and Nicolau
Manubens for technical support, as
well as the EC-Earth consortium for the
model development. |
Abstract:
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Peer Reviewed |
Subject(s):
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-Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Energies -Seasonal climate forecasting -Wind energy -Climate prediction -Wind power -Teleconnections -North Pacific Mode -Atmospheric Bridge -Wind drought -Energia eòlica -Previsió del temps |
Rights:
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Document type:
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Article - Published version Article |
Published by:
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American Geophysical Union (AGU)
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