Temporal and Spatial Variability of Wind Resources in the United States as Derived from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis

AbstractThis study examines the spatial and temporal variability of wind speed at 80 m above ground (the average hub height of most modern wind turbines) in the contiguous United States using Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) data from 1979 to 2011. The mean 80-m wind exhibits strong seasonality and large spatial variability, with higher (lower) wind speeds in the winter (summer), and higher (lower) speeds over much of the Midwest and U.S. Northeast (U.S. West and Southeast). Trends are also variable spatially, with more upward trends in areas of the Great Plains and Intermountain West of the United States and more downward trends elsewhere. The leading EOF mode, which accounts for 20% (summer) to 33% (winter) of the total variance and represents in-phase variations across the United States, responds mainly to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) in summer and El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the other seasons. The dominant variation pattern can be explained by a southerly/southwesterly (wes...

[1]  Olga Petrik,et al.  Investigation on the use of NCEP/NCAR, MERRA and NCEP/CFSR reanalysis data in wind resource analysis , 2011 .

[2]  A. Hall,et al.  El Niño-Southern Oscillation impacts on winter winds over Southern California , 2012, Climate Dynamics.

[3]  Sarah M. Kang,et al.  Expansion of the Hadley Cell under Global Warming: Winter versus Summer , 2012 .

[4]  J. Wallace,et al.  Teleconnections in the Geopotential Height Field during the Northern Hemisphere Winter , 1981 .

[5]  M. Iredell,et al.  The NCEP Climate Forecast System Version 2 , 2014 .

[6]  G. Können,et al.  Trends in storminess over the Netherlands, 1962–2002 , 2005 .

[7]  K. Klink.  Trends and Interannual Variability of Wind Speed Distributions in Minnesota , 2002 .

[8]  X. Bian,et al.  Climate and climate variability of the wind power resources in the Great Lakes region of the United States , 2010 .

[9]  Statistical Methods for Quantifying the Effect of the El Niño—Southern Oscillation on Wind Power in the Northern Great Plains of the United States , 2007 .

[10]  J. Wallace,et al.  A Pacific Interdecadal Climate Oscillation with Impacts on Salmon Production , 1997 .

[11]  Swadhin K. Behera,et al.  El Niño Modoki and its possible teleconnection , 2007 .

[12]  J. Ledolter,et al.  Addendum to “Wind speed trends over the contiguous United States” , 2010 .

[13]  J. Thepaut,et al.  The ERA‐Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system , 2011 .

[14]  C. L. Archer,et al.  Spatial and temporal distributions of U.S. winds and wind power at 80 m derived from measurements , 2003 .

[15]  Arun Kumar,et al.  An assessment of oceanic variability in the NCEP climate forecast system reanalysis , 2011 .

[16]  El Niño stills winter winds across the southern Canadian Prairies , 2009 .

[17]  Thomas M. Smith,et al.  Extended Reconstruction of Global Sea Surface Temperatures Based on COADS Data (1854–1997) , 2003 .

[18]  K. Klink.  Trends in mean monthly maximum and minimum surface wind speeds in the coterminous United States, 1961 to 1990 , 1999 .

[19]  Jean-Noël Thépaut,et al.  Northern Hemisphere atmospheric stilling partly attributed to an increase in surface roughness , 2010 .

[20]  Preston W. Leftwich,et al.  Forecasting the Impacts of Strong Wintertime Post-Cold Front Winds in the Northern Plains , 1995 .

[21]  W. Briggs.  Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences , 2007 .

[22]  T. McVicar,et al.  Observational evidence from two mountainous regions that near‐surface wind speeds are declining more rapidly at higher elevations than lower elevations: 1960–2006 , 2010 .

[23]  Bin Wang,et al.  Circumglobal Teleconnection in the Northern Hemisphere Summer , 2005 .

[24]  A. Degaetano.  Identification and Implications of Biases in U.S. Surface Wind Observation, Archival, and Summarization Methods , 1998 .

[25]  Xiaolan L. Wang,et al.  Homogenization and Trend Analysis of Canadian Near-Surface Wind Speeds , 2010 .

[26]  Arun Kumar,et al.  Evaluating the tropospheric variability in National Centers for Environmental Prediction's climate forecast system reanalysis , 2011 .

[27]  Huiling Qin,et al.  Evaluation of the Warm-Season Diurnal Variability over East Asia in Recent Reanalyses JRA-55, ERA-Interim, NCEP CFSR, and NASA MERRA , 2014 .

[28]  Alexei G. Sankovski,et al.  Special report on emissions scenarios , 2000 .

[29]  ENSO Impacts on Peak Wind Gusts in the United States , 2004 .

[30]  R. Barthelmie,et al.  Wind speed trends over the contiguous United States , 2009 .

[31]  Fuqing Zhang,et al.  Evaluation of NCEP-CFSR, NCEP-NCAR, ERA-Interim, and ERA-40 Reanalysis Datasets against Independent Sounding Observations over the Tibetan Plateau , 2013 .

[32]  Moti Segal,et al.  On the potential change in wind power over the US due to increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases , 2001 .

[33]  Lifeng Luo,et al.  A first look at Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) for hydrological seasonal prediction , 2011 .

[34]  B. Hayden,et al.  The North Atlantic subtropical anticyclone , 1997 .

[35]  David J. Sailor,et al.  Vulnerability of wind power resources to climate change in the continental United States , 2002 .

[36]  M. Hart,et al.  Climate change implications for wind power resources in the Northwest United States , 2008 .

[37]  S. Saha,et al.  The NCEP Climate Forecast System , 2006 .

[38]  Julie K. Lundquist,et al.  Data Clustering Reveals Climate Impacts on Local Wind Phenomena , 2012 .

[39]  Thomas M. Smith,et al.  Improved Extended Reconstruction of SST (1854–1997) , 2004 .

[40]  J. Wallace,et al.  The Arctic oscillation signature in the wintertime geopotential height and temperature fields , 1998 .

[41]  Willett Kempton,et al.  Electric power from offshore wind via synoptic-scale interconnection , 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[42]  W. F. Sandusky,et al.  Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States , 1987 .

[43]  Soo-Hyun Yoo,et al.  An assessment of the surface climate in the NCEP climate forecast system reanalysis , 2011 .

[44]  Y. Benjamini,et al.  Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing , 1995 .

[45]  Uang,et al.  The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis , 2010 .

[46]  Ming Xu,et al.  Changes in near‐surface wind speed in China: 1969–2005 , 2011 .

[47]  K. Klink.  Climatological mean and interannual variance of United States surface wind speed, direction and velocity , 1999 .

[48]  Q. Fu,et al.  Widening of the tropical belt in a changing climate , 2007 .

[49]  Mark Z. Jacobson,et al.  Where is the ideal location for a US East Coast offshore grid? , 2012 .

[50]  Ming Xu,et al.  Steady decline of east Asian monsoon winds, 1969–2000: Evidence from direct ground measurements of wind speed , 2006 .

[51]  Heiko Paeth,et al.  A model intercomparison study of climate change‐signals in extratropical circulation , 2004 .

[52]  R. Barthelmie,et al.  Assessing climate change impacts on the near-term stability of the wind energy resource over the United States , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[53]  K. Klink,et al.  Atmospheric Circulation Effects on Wind Speed Variability at Turbine Height , 2007 .