Wind climates in the contiguous USA

This research is focused on quantifying past wind climates and developing robust projections for future conditions using both empirical downscaling and dynamical downscaling tools. This research is ongoing.
Under prior funding from NSF: project # 0618364 we focused on quantifying historical trends.
Under new funding from NSF: project # 1019603 we are focussing on making climate change projections.

Research results:

Historical tendencies

Map: Click here for a map of the study area showing the stations from which we have analyzed data (they all have continuous records for 1973-2005).

Overview: Here is an overview of the wind speed distributions and energy density 1973-2005

Historical trends: Here are the linear trends over the entire study period (1973-2005)

Here are trends from 2 observational data sets, 4 reanalysis data sets and 2 RCM

Climate Projections:
Here are analyses of climate projections of wind energy density from the NARCCAP RCM suite

Funding:

Many of the results shown here were generated with support from the US National Science Foundation (project # 0618364 and 1019603- here is our final report for 0618364 ) and Nordic Energy Research via the Climate and Energy Systems; Risks, Potential, Adaptation.

Data sources:

In situ wind data were obtained from the National Climate Data Center

Some of the RCM output used here derive from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP).

The GCM data used are taken from data portal developed for the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hosted by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which is supported by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy.

All data (wind speeds and energy density) pertain to a nominal height of 10 m a.g.l.