Widespread decrease in wind energy resources found over the Northern Hemisphere
Widespread decrease in surface winds is found over the Northern Hemisphere. Wind energy resources are in rapid decline in many places. Study finds atmospheric stilling is a widespread and potentially global phenomenon.
As climate change is becoming more and more a matter of concern, efforts on mitigation are being undertaken by the world community. Developing clean and renewable energy is a major component of those efforts for its significant contribution to reducing carbon emission to the atmosphere compared with fossil fuel. In 2016, renewable energy contributes more than 19% to the global final energy consumption. Of all the renewable energy sources, the wind is one of the key players in terms of installed electricity generating capacity, only exceeded by hydropower.
Wind energy is a natural resource characterized by instability. Previous studies mainly focus on the assessment of wind energy reserves, but it’s not clear how the wind energy evolves over time.
A new study focusing on the change in wind energy resources and models’ simulation ability over the Northern Hemisphere by the collaboration of IAP researchers–Ph.D. candidate Qun Tian, Professor Gang Huang, Associate Professor Kaiming Hu, and Purdue University researcher–Professor Dev Niyogi was recently published. It reveals a widespread decline in wind energy resources over the Northern Hemisphere. Using station observation data, the study finds that approximately 30%, 50% and 80% of the stations lost over 30% of the wind power potential since 1979 in North America, Europe, and Asia, respectively. The study also reveals that global climate models (GCM) cannot replicate the long-term changes on wind energy, indicating wind energy projections based on GCM simulations should be used with careful consideration to the model performance.
“Our study is one of the first comprehensive assessments of the GCM-based winds against surface observations over multiple continents. We found that the decline of wind energy is a widespread and potential global phenomenon. In addition, the finding that the climate models have a notable deficiency in simulating wind energy is an important conclusion that needs further attention.”, said Tian, the lead author of the paper.
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The paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S036054421832231X?via%3Dihub
Preprint here: http://www.escience.cn/system/file?fileId=102783
Observed and global climate model based changes in wind power potential over the Northern Hemisphere during 1979–2016
Abstract
Using an observed dataset, we study the changes of surface wind speeds from 1979 to 2016 over the Northern Hemisphere and their impacts on wind power potential. The results show that surface wind speeds were decreasing in the past four decades over most regions in the Northern Hemisphere, including North America, Europe and Asia. In conjunction with decreasing surface wind speeds, the wind power potential at the typical height of a commercial wind turbine was also declining over the past decades for most regions in the Northern Hemisphere. Approximately 30%, 50% and 80% of the stations lost over 30% of the wind power potential since 1979 in North America, Europe and Asia, respectively. In addition, the evaluation of climate models shows their relatively poor ability to simulate long-term temporal trends of surface winds, indicating the need for enhancing the process that can improve the reliability of climate models for wind energy assessments.
Excerpts from the paper:
of annual percentile for observed surface wind speeds. 5th, 10th – 90th in 10
percentile increment and 95th percentile are shown. The domain considered
for a)North America, b)Europe, c)Asia, while
d)Global considers all the sites available in the dataset.
The results show that a reduction in wind power potential occurs in most of the areas (Figure 3), as deduced from analysis of section 3.1. There are 59 out of 214 (27.6%) stations in North America that have lost over 30 percent of their wind power potential since 1979 (Figure 4). Stations located in Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Virginia and Maine in the United States are among those which appear experienced notable impact.
Remarkable alterations occur in Asia, where 65.0% of the stations show more than a 30 percent decrease with 50.5% with more than a 50 percent decrease (Figure 4).
power potential. Cumulative changes in the wind power potential from
1979 to 2016.
The results from analysis of observational surface wind speeds reemphasize that atmospheric stilling is a widespread and potentially global phenomenon. Among three continents included in this study, the decline in Asia is much sharper compared to North America and Europe. In terms of wind speed percentiles, strong winds decline faster than weak winds in Asia and Europe, while in North America, weak winds exceed strong winds in decline ratio.
Consistent with the decrease of surface wind speeds, the wind power potential was also decreasing in most regions of the Northern Hemisphere in the past decades. Around one third of the stations in North America, have experienced a huge decrease (over 30 percent) in wind power potential while over half of the stations in Europe and around four- fifths in Asia have the same magnitude of decrease.
For China, the country with the largest installed wind energy capacity, regions which have a considerable decrease are mainly regions with abundant wind energy resources and where a number of gigantic commercial wind farms were built. Changes in all four seasons are of the similar magnitude despite of the large differences in their mean states. For Asia and North America, the sharpest decrease appears along with the largest mean wind power potential. However, this is not the case for Europe, where the sharpest decrease in wind power potential appears in the autumn, while the largest mean value occurs in the winter.
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The pattern of climatological wind speeds in CMIP5 simulations is also not consistent with the observations compared to the surface temperature simulation [62]. Thus the CMIP5 simulations of the changes in surface wind speeds should be used with considerable caution and likely not reliable.
We need more birds to stir up the air. Didn’t we use to have more birds?
Butterflies.
Of course like much in this areas the amount of historic valid measurement they have is tiny for what they need to have make claims in a scientifically meaningful way.
But who cares . models can of course given you the results you ‘need ‘ anyway even if that ‘result ‘ is equal to saying up is down or black is white . And there is not a dam thing that cannot be blamed on AGW , so its free and easy time .
“knr December 5, 2018 at 12:09 pm
Of course like much in this areas the amount of historic valid measurement they have is tiny ….”
But weather stations have been reporting wind speed for about a century, no?
Atmospheric stilling….caused by, you guessed it….us.
Quick, better cut CO2 emissions even more and install MOAR windmills to prevent wind disruption….wait, I mean stilling.
/snark/
Laughable……
Let’s add wind to the many things IPCC climate models get wrong.
More Extreme Calm
The larger factor is overstated, politico-connected lobbyist claims not matching reality.
Who’s been taking my wind? Each wind turbine removes energy from the wind. Eventually there will be no wind left. Or with enough wind turbines can we slow the earth’s rotation? /sarc
So… does this mean hurricanes are going to be LOSING intensity, or is this just the winds that drive windmills?
Is this some kind of a joke?
Perhaps not, maybe just caused by “a fluid which possesses a type of ‘negative gravity’ making 95% of known universe” opines Dr James Farnes from Oxford University.
I saw that also Vuk.. wildly OT but ynot eh
Gives a lot of weight (positive gravity – or is that a ‘type’ of negative negative gravity?) to the idea that the Red & White colour scheme of Christmas originated from the Fly Agaric mushroom.
Climate Change must have produced an early and especially bumper crop of the hallucinogenic fungus in & around Oxford this year.
Ask the speculators how a fluid with negative gravity increases the purported unseen gravity additions which holds the galaxies together.
If the field of dark/negative mass is more or less uniform and larger in size than the galaxy, I imagine that the effect of that negative gravity field on the observable matter will be to keep the galaxy constrained to a more compact size and alter the stellar velocities to be such as is observed which cannot be explained by a pure visible matter/gravity model. It kind of makes intuitive sense to me though I don’t think I could do the math to prove it. Of course this is speculation too, I’m no physicist but just like to read and think about it.
I also saw that article about “a fluid which possesses a type of ‘negative gravity’ making 95% of known universe”. It sounded a little like a new version of the Luminiferous aether.
‘They’ of course are assuming without a valid basis that the negative gravity fluid is in fact a fluid. If it indeed has negative gravity there is nothing to hold it together and it rapidly becomes a gas. Then what happens? the universe flies apart?
“If it indeed has negative gravity there is nothing to hold it together and it rapidly becomes a gas.”
Well, to engage in wild speculation, perhaps the fluid is attractive to itself but repulsive to normal matter. Or perhaps there is another force, similar to the Strong Nuclear Force, that acts only on the fluid and neutralizes the fluid’s self-repulsion.
These turbines also cause local climate to change.
https://www.thenational.ae/uae/science/wind-turbines-contribute-to-climate-change-study-finds-1.777393
It’s important to say “local” apparently, not to be confused with global climate change etc.
Yet we add locals together to get global…..So locals together equal global, right?…..I am sooo confused. 🙂
Too many wind turbines slowing down the wind? Seriously though. If we had enough wind turbines to meet global energy needs, would that be enough to noticeably slow the wind? Or would it slow the rotation of the earth? What would the effect be?
If we pointed them all in the same direction, we could fly the Earth around the Solar System….
Note: The above comment represents a journalist’s view of climate science, and has no basis in reality….
“If we pointed them all in the same direction, we could fly the Earth around the Solar System…”
… and park it a few hundred meters further away from the sun where the temperature anomaly is a perfect zero.
Australia should be ashamed of treating this man as they did. For me Australian Universities have reached 4th world status https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCya4LilBZ8
Wind patterns are chaotic systems. A small influence by the wind farms can change the wind patterns significantly. Real man made wind change.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Renewable Turbulence is a first-order forcing of the artificial green blight.
or Fatal Anthropogenic Renewable Turbulence.
I’m with Robber above.
I’ve been very concerned that all those windmills have been slowing the Earth’s rotation.
Inducing more earthquakes.
Less wind will reduce the threat.
There–I’m learning to think (feel?) like a liberal.
Except they never see a brighter side.
And wind speed above 65 latitudes is ???
Revelation 7:1
After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so no wind could blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree.
(or any windmill)
So global warming is actually caused by reduced convective heat transfer from the surface due to stilling caused by wind turbines.
We could add that solar farms where crops and grass use to grow are changing the environment too. Water run off, changes in temperatures, co2 absorption, excess heat from the back surface of the panels… what else? And then there is the undefined ….
The subsidy wind is the most important thing of all.
So…
Let me ask. Is hydroelectric part of renewable? It would make sense, since the 19% of world power is renewable (paraphrased) seems outrageously glib. I’d have thought that worldwide, PV Solar remains below 2.5% and wind below 3.5% of total power production. Way less, actually.
Just asking.
GoatGuy
It is and it isn’t. It depends on who is doing the classification. The US tends to leave it out because it’s not subsidized and they only count subsidized (to get more money for these, one imagines) but it is included in some write-ups when discussing “non-fossil fuel” energy sources. Fluid terminology.
I’ve just read this post. Is it possible that there is some confusion over “electricity production” and “primary energy” (again)? Here are the 2017 primary energy stats from BP (Million Tonnes Oil Equivalent)
MTOE %
Oil 4621.9 34.2
Gas 3156.0 23.4
Coal 3731.5 27.6
Nuclear 596.4 4.4
Hydro 918.6 6.8
Renewables 486.8 3.6
TOTAL 13511.2 100.0
Here in the UK electricity delivers less than one sixth of primary energy.
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2018-primary-energy.pdf
I think they include burning cow dung for cooking and heating by poor people in Africa etc. It kills them but it’s renewable so kicks the stats up.
Air speed in crop canopies is relevant to the resistance at the leaf boundary to gas exchange (ex:CO2) & water (ex: transpiration cooling); there is less resistance to CO2 & transpiration when air speed is notable. Bear in mind that inside the plant canopy the air speed can be 30% less; thus the dynamic is more complex than simply a factor of how a single leaf responds to wind speed.
As always, different kinds of plants have different degrees of reaction to air velocity at the leaf boudary layer. For example in tomato seedlings by going from 0.1 meters/sec to 1.0 meteres/sec.
there is a gain in photosynthesis. While for rice the same improved rate of net photosynthesis only requires boosting air speed from 0.1m/s. to 0.8 meters/-sec.
The issue becomes yet more nuanced since in actually mature tomato plants grown inside CO2 enriched greenhouses it is CO2 driving results & not air speed. Which does not totally detract from the benefit of air speed when consider that field sown crops do not get artifically elevated CO2.
A study of one plant that they bumped air speed at the leaf boundary layer from 0.3 meters/sec. up to 1.0 meters/sec. found that this resulted in a net photosynthetic gain of 62-72%; which team calculated as being the equivalent of increasing CO2 that plant was grown in by about 270 ppm more CO2. That said, the same team found increasing CO2 under which that plant was grown in by giving it an extra 270 ppm CO2 resulted in a net photosynthetic gain of 111%.
Great post, thanks.
I’ve been wondering about this for many years, and have never gotten any answers from pro-wind people. Wind is the major transport mechanism for heat, water, minerals, and biological materials on this planet. Slowing it down, especially at the surface, would appear to me to have an enormous environmental impact. But I’ve never seen it addressed at all until this study, which is at least a start.
Scotland has a big problem with overproduction of electricity from wind turbines. Perhaps they can solve that problem and ameliorate the wind energy reduction by using the output from some turbines to run the others backwards as giant fans. Wouldn’t that be a kick?!
They could then play ‘catch’ with all the energy – blow it from one windmill to another where it is turned back into electricity. Wash, rinse and repeat until the energy is needed in Glasgow. Problem solved!
This wind-stilling should reduce the wind-chill factor in winter.
Here we have, presumably, a striking instance of a natural climate variation. I bet it’s one for which climatologists can’t think of a persuasive explanation for either. So maybe global (mostly N. Hemisphere) warming is also an unexplainable natural variation.
Climatologists don’t have the climate system mentally boxed in the way they insinuate that they do.