Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publication Date
4 June 2018

The Influence of Real-World Wind Turbine Deployments on Local to Mesoscale Climate

Authors

Author

Paired simulations are conducted using the Weather Research and Forecasting model applied at convection permitting resolution in order to determine the impact of wind turbines (WTs) on the local to mesoscale climate. Using actual WT locations and a model of the effect of the WT rotor on the flow field, it is shown that while the presence of WT changes wind speeds (WSs) and near‐surface air temperature in 4‐km grid cells in which WTs are located, the impact at larger scales on near‐surface air temperature, specific humidity, the fluxes of latent and sensible heat, boundary layer heights, and precipitation is not significant in any season other than summer. During summer, the maximum pairwise difference in grid cell mean temperatures is 0.5 K and the maximum increase in near‐surface specific humidity is 0.4 g/kg. However, a spatial average of the mean seasonal perturbation of air temperature by WT gives a net impact of <0.1 K. Precipitation probability is also not significantly impacted in any season other than summer. In the summer the presence of WT is associated with a small decrease in precipitation probability and a decrease in season total precipitation of −2.6%. The finding of minor magnitude, but significant impacts, during summer should be used to contextualize results of substantial climate impacts from WT arrays deployed in the U.S. Central Plains based on short‐term simulations conducted for the summer season.

“The Influence Of Real-World Wind Turbine Deployments On Local To Mesoscale Climate”. 2018. Journal Of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 123: 5804-5826. doi:10.1029/2017JD028114.
Funding Program Area(s)