Cornell University contribution to the DoE grant: A Framework for Improving Analysis and Modeling of Earth System and Intersectoral Dynamics at Regional Scales (HyperFACETS).

Content

  • Overview
  • Cornell University foci and contributions
  • Publications
  • Team
  • Professor Pryor's Homepage
  • Professor Barthelmie's Homepage

    • Overview

    The v2 project started on 1 September 2019, the v3 project started on 1 September 2022. The objectives of the project are to: (1) advance our understanding of processes at the climate-water-energy-land-decision interface, and (2) fundamentally improve our ability to perform credible climate modeling of particular regions. This project is (to some degree) a continuation of the FACETS project. For more about our research under that project click here: FACETS website

    Cornell University foci and contributions

    The Cornell team is participating in four key aspects of the project; (i) Differential credibility assesment for different downscaling (AKA regionalization) methods. In the Cornell case, we are really focussing on how can the credibility be quantified for statistical downscaling approaches. (ii) Storylines: physically self-consistent unfolding of past events, or of plausible future events or pathways. In the Cornell case, we are examining wind storms in the Northeast and are seeking to improve understanding of how they occur (their dynamics), their characteristics and ultimately how they may evolve under global climate change. (iii) Metrics and processes to evaluate and understand models and advance fundamental understanding of the climate system. (iv) Multi-sector dynamics: the interplay between global and regional climate forcings and implications for key aspects of energy supply using climate simulations conducted at a range of spatial scales for scenarios of changing land use, irrigation and energy mix. Our key impact sector of interest is the wind energy industry.

    Credibility of climate projections

    A key aspect of making climate projections is to understand and clearly articulate the credibility of those projections. Our research has advanced methods to better quantify the credibility of statistically downscaled projections, the ability of regional models to represent key processes in contemporary and possible future climates and the credibility with which global Earth System Models reproduce so-called internal modes of climate variability.
    Right is a schematic of the 6 major internal climate modes (i.e. repeated patterns of variability caused by air-sea exchange and thus not caused by greenhouse gas forcing. Correct representation of these modes is critical to making climate projections at the season, annual, interannual and interdecadal time scales. We have developed new metrics for quantifying differential credibility of Earth System Model (ESM) representation of modes of nature climate variability and applied them to output from 11 ESM (58 realizations in total).

    Windstorms in the NorthEast

    One of our key contributions is to improve understanding of the dynamics and consequences of wind storms in the Northeastern USA. Here are two videos show an example of two extreme wind events. This visualization is based on output from ERA5 (times are in UTC). The panel on the left shows a time lapse video of hourly wind speeds at 100 m a.g.l.. The panel on the right shows the same output but now normalized to the grid cell 90th percentile wind speed over the period 1979-2018.

    An Alberta Clipper: during 5-7 April 1979.

    A coastal storm: 28-30 October 2012.

    Publications

    Scholarly publications

    In review
    In press
    Published
  • Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2024): Power production, inter and intra-array wake losses from the U.S. east coast offshore wind energy lease areas Energies 17 1063 doi:10.3390/en17051063 .
  • Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2024): Wind shadows impact planning of large offshore wind farms Applied Energy 359 122755 doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.122755.
  • Foody R., Coburn J., Aird J.A., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2024): Quantitative comparison of power production and power quality onshore and offshore: a case study from the eastern United States, Wind Energy Science 9 263–280, doi: 10.5194/wes-9-263-2024.
  • Zhou X., Letson F., Coburn J.J., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Windstorms in the Northeastern USA in the Contemporary and Future Climate. Climate Dynamics 62 2107-2128 doi: 10.1007/s00382-023-07012-1
  • Coburn J.J. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Projecting future energy production from operating wind farms in North America: Part 3: Variability. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 62 1523-1537 https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-23-0104.1 .
  • Barthelmie R.J., Larsen G.C. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Modeling annual electricity production and levelized cost of energy from the US East coast offshore wind energy lease areas. Energies 16 4550 doi: 10.3390/en16124550.
  • Sethunadh J., Letson F.W., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Assessing the impact of global warming on windstorms in the Northeastern United States using the pseudo-global-warming method. Natural Hazards 117 2807-2834 doi: 10.1007/s11069-023-05968-1.
  • Pryor S.C., Coburn J.J., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T. (2023): Projecting future energy production from operating wind farms in North America: Part 1: Dynamical downscaling. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 62 63-80 doi: 10.1175/JAMC-D-22-0044.1
  • Coburn J.J. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Projecting future energy production from operating wind farms in North America: Part 2: Statistical downscaling. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 62 81-101 doi: 10.1175/JAMC-D-22-0047.1
  • Pryor S.C., Letson F.W., Shepherd T. and Barthelmie R.J. (2023): Evaluation of WRF simulation of deep convection in the US Southern Great Plains. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 62 41-62 doi: 10.1175/JAMC-D-22-0090.1
  • Bukovsky M., Gutowski W., Mearns L.O., Paquin D. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Climate Storylines. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 104 E96-98 doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0224.1
  • Coburn J.J. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Evolution of the internal climate modes under future warming. Journal of Climate 36 511-529 doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-22-0200.1
  • Coburn J., Arnheim J., and Pryor S.C. (2022): Short-term forecasting of wind gusts at airports across CONUS using machine learning. Earth and Space Sciences 9, e2022EA002486, doi: 10.1029/2022EA002486.
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Candence J., Dellwik, E., Hasager C.B., Kral S.T., Reuder J., Rodgers M. and Veraat M. (2022): Atmospheric Drivers of Wind Turbine Blade Leading Edge Erosion: Review and Recommendations for Future Research. Energies 2022, 15(22), 8553; doi: 10.3390/en15228553.
  • Reed K.A, Goldenson N., Grotjahn R., Gutowski W.A., Jones A.D., Leung L.R., McGinnis S.A., Pryor S.C., Srivastava K., Ullrich P.A. and Zarzycki C.M. (2022): Metrics as tools for bridging science and applications. WIREs Climate Change e799, doi: 10.1002/wcc.799 .
  • Shepherd T.J., Coburn J., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Exploring ENSO-induced anomalies over North America in Historical and Future Climate Simulations that use HadGEM2-ESM output to drive WRF. Climate 10 117 doi: 10.3390/cli10080117
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J., Hahmann A.N. and Garcia Santiago O.M. (2022): Wakes in and between very large offshore arrays. Journal of Physics: Conference series 2265 doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/2265/2/022037 .
  • Coburn J.J. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Do machine learning approaches offer skill improvement for short-term forecasting of wind gust occurrence and magnitude? Weather and Forecasting 37 525-543 doi: 10.1175/WAF-D-21-0118.1 .
  • Aird J.A., Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Occurrence of low-level jets over the eastern US coastal zone at heights relevant to wind energy. Energies, 15, 445 doi: 10.3390/en15020445
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T.J. (2021): Wind power production from very large offshore wind farms. Joule doi: 10.1016/j.joule.2021.09.002
  • Coburn J.J. and Pryor S.C. (2021): Differential Credibility of Climate Modes in CMIP6. Journal of Climate. 34 8145-8164 doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0832.1.
  • Barthelmie R.J., Pryor S.C. (2021): Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Wind Energy. Climate. 9:136. doi: 10.3390/cli9090136.
  • Aird J.A., Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J. and Pryor S.C. (2021): WRF-simulated Low-Level Jets over Iowa: Characterization and sensitivity studies. Wind Energy Science 6 1015–1030 https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2020-113 .
  • Letson F., Barthelmie R.J., Hodges K. and Pryor S.C. (2021): Windstorms in the Northeastern United States. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 21 2001–2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2001-2021.
  • Barthelmie R.J., Dantuono K., Renner E., Letson F.W. and Pryor S.C. (2021): Extreme wind and waves in U.S. east coast offshore wind energy lease areas. Energies 14 1053 doi: 10.3390/en14041053
  • Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2021): A global assessment of extreme wind speeds for wind energy applications. Nature Energy 6 268-276 doi: 10.1038/s41560-020-00773-7. See some further information about this paper here
  • Pryor S.C., Letson F.W. and Barthelmie R.J. (2020): Variability in wind energy generation across the contiguous USA. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 59 2021-2039 doi:10.1175/JAMC-D-20-0162.1
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Bukovsky M.S., Leung L.R. and Sakaguchi K. (2020): Climate change impacts on wind power generation. Nature Reviews: Earth and Environment 1 627-643 doi: 10.1038/s43017-020-0101-7.
  • Letson F., Shepherd T.J., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2020): WRF Modelling of Deep Convection and Hail for Wind Power Applications. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 59 1717–1733 doi: 10.1175/JAMC-D-20-0033.1
  • Pryor S.C. and Schoof J.T. (2020): Differential credibility assessment for statistical downscaling. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 59 1333-1349.doi:10.1175/JAMC-D-19-0296.1
  • Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J., Aird J.A. and Pryor S.C. (2020): Power and wind shear implications of large wind turbine scenarios in the U.S. Central Plains. Energies 13(16) 4269 https://doi.org/10.3390/en13164269 .
  • Pryor S.C., Shepherd T., Volker P., Hahmann A., and Barthelmie R.J. (2020): Diagnosing systematic differences in predicted wind turbine array-array interactions. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1618 062023 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1618/6/062023 .
  • Aird J., Barthelmie R.J., †Shepherd T.J. and Pryor S.C. (2020): WRF-simulated springtime low-level jets over Iowa: Implications for wind energy. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1618 062020 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1618/6/062020 .
  • Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J. and Pryor S.C. (2020): Increasing turbine dimensions: Impact on shear and power. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1618 062024 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1618/6/062024 .
  • Letson F., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2020): Sub-regional variability in wind turbine blade leading-edge erosion potential. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1618 032046 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1618/3/032046 .
  • Gutowski Jr W.J., Hall A., Leung L.R., O’Brien T., Patricola C., Ullrich P., Arritt R., Bukovsky M., Calvin K.V., Feng Z., Jones A.D., Kooperman G.J., Monier E., Pritchard M.S., Pryor S.C., Qian Y., Rhoades A.M., Roberts A.F., Sakaguchi K., Urban N., Zrarzycki C. (2020): The ongoing need for high-resolution regional climate models: Process understanding and stakeholder information. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 101 (5): E664–E683. doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0113.1

    Publications in trade magazines (for Stakeholder engagement)

    Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2020): 20% wind by 2030. WindTech International, May/June.

    Presentations

    Example Presentations

  • Barthelmie R.J., Pryor S.C., Olsen B.T. and Fleming P. (2024): Offshore Wind Farm Annual Energy Production Sensitivity To Model Assumptions, 15th Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Barthelmie R.J., Foody R., Coburn J.J., Aird J.A. and Pryor S.C. (2024): Assessing wind resource variability using the New York State Mesonet 28thApplied Climatology Conference, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore
  • Coburn J.J., Letson F., Zho, X., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2024): Northeastern Windstorms and Midlatitude Cyclones in the MPI Large Ensemble, 37th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Coburn J.J., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2024): Assessing and Modeling the Compound Hazard of Freezing Rain and Wind Gusts, 28thApplied Climatology Conference, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Moraglia G., Zhou X., Pryor S.C., Crippa P. (2024): Quantifying the impacts of an urban area on clouds and precipitation patterns in downwind regions: A modeling perspective, 38th Conference on Hydrology, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Letson F., Coburn J.J., Zhou X., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2024): Extreme Wind Speeds in US Offshore Windfarms, 15th Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Letson F., Coburn J.J., Zhou X., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2024): Historical and Future Windstorms Affecting the Northeast US: Their Impacts and Origins, 37th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Letson F., Dellwik E., Tanaka M. and Ushio T. (2024): Robust Hydrometeor Size Distribution Measurements – Are We Getting Closer? 24th Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Pryor S.C., Bojovic D., Seneviratne S., Zhang X., Block P., Larsen M.A.D., Caron, L-P. (2024): Regional Climate Information for Society 19th Symposium on Societal Applications: Policy, Research and Practice, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Thompson K., Zhou X., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2024): A comparison of how Hurricane Sandy could have impacted offshore wind turbines based on WRF-only and COAWST model simulations 15th Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Zhou X., Barthelmie R.J., Coburn J.J., Letson F. and Pryor S.C. (2024): Future Extreme Winter Windstorms in the Northeastern US: a Storyline Based Pseudo-Global Warming Approach, 37th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Zhou X., Letson F., Crippa P., Bukovsky M. and Pryor S.C. (2024): Effect of Urbanization on the Hydroclimate and Deep Convection in the Southern Great Plains and Northeastern US, 38th Conference on Hydrology, American Meteorological Society Conference, January-February 2024, Baltimore.
  • Pryor S.C. and Coburn J.J. (2023): Gone with the wind. “Exploring Unprecedented Extremes”. 21-23 November, Ouranos and NORCE, Montreal, Canada Invited presentation.
  • Coburn J.J., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Characterizing Compound Hazards: The Case of Freezing Rain and Wind Gusts. WCRP Open Science Conference: “Advancing climate science for a sustainable future”, October 2023, Kigali, Rwanda
  • Zhou X., Barthelmie R.J., Coburn J.J., Letson F. and Pryor S.C. (2023): Contemporary and Future Extreme Windstorms in the Northeastern USA, WCRP Open Science Conference: “Advancing climate science for a sustainable future”, October 2023, Kigali, Rwanda
  • Zhou X., Letson F., Crippa P. and Pryor S.C.: Urban effects on precipitation and deep convection, WCRP Open Science Conference: “Advancing climate science for a sustainable future”, October 2023, Kigali, Rwanda.
  • Zhou X., Barthelmie R.J. Bukovsky M., Letson F., Coburn J. and Pryor S.C. The future of extreme winter windstorms in the US Northeast . AGU Fall Meeting, Chicago IL, 12-17 December 2022.
  • Zhou X., Letson F., Crippa P. and Pryor S.C. Urban impacts on deep convection in the Southern Great Plains. AGU Fall Meeting, Chicago IL, 12-17 December 2022.
  • Foody R., Aird J., Barthelmie R.J., Coburn J.J. and Pryor S.C. Wind resources and operating conditions in the new York Bight offshore lease areas. AGU Fall Meeting, Chicago IL, 12-17 December 2022.
  • Coburn J.J., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Predicting damaging compound freezing rain – wind gust events by machine learning. AGU Fall Meeting, Chicago IL, 12-17 December 2022. Pryor S.C. (2022): Projecting future energy production at operating wind farms Keynote presentation at Near-surface wind speed changes: observation, modelling, attribution, and projection Goteburg, Sweden 12-13 December 2022.
  • Coburn J.J., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Identifying compound freezing rain-high wind gust events: linking the geophysical hazard to societal impacts NA-CORDEX Storylines Workshop (online), 25-27 April 2022.
  • Letson F., Shepherd T.J. Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor, S.C. (2022): How do Windstorms Derived from Transient WRF-MPI Simulations Compare with Historical Storms? NA-CORDEX Storylines Workshop (online), 25-27 April 2022.
  • Zhou X., Barthelmie R.J., Bukovsky M., Letson F. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Representation of Winter Windstorm Storylines in WRF model. NA-CORDEX Storylines Workshop (online), 25-27 April 2022.
  • Pryor S.C. (2022): Grid Vulnerability to Weather and Climate Extremes--past, present, and future. Invited presentation to the Presidential forum. American Meteorological Society 102nd Annual conference Houston, TX January 2022.
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T.J. (2022): Power and Wakes in the U.S. East Coast Offshore Lease Areas. American Meteorological Society 102nd Annual conference Houston, TX January 2022.
  • Pryor S.C. (2021): Could/will climate change impact wind energy resources? American Geophysical Union Annual conference, New Orleans, LA December 2021 (invited).
  • Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2021): Differential Credibility of Climate Modes in CMIP6. American Geophysical Union Annual conference, New Orleans, LA December 2021.
  • Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2021): Extreme wind and wave conditions derived using the high-resolution ERA5 reanalysis. Wind Energy Science Conference (WESC) Hannover, Germany May 2021.
  • Coburn J.J. and Pryor S.C. (2021): Prediction of large magnitude wind gusts using machine learning. NSF Convergence Workshop, AGU Online, May 2021.
  • Pryor S.C., Shepherd T.J., Letson F. and Barthelmie R.J. (2021): Modeling convective storms and hail over the southern Great Plains with WRF. 3rd European Hail Workshop, Karlsruhe, Germany, March 2021.
  • Aird J., Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J. and Pryor S.C. (2020): WRF-simulated springtime low-level jets over Iowa: Implications for wind energy. The Science of Making Torque from Wind. University of Delft, Delft, The Netherlands, Sept 2020.

    Team

  • Professor Sara C. Pryor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Professor Rebecca J. Barthelmie, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
  • Dr. Tristan Shepherd, Post Doc, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (now at Fannie Mae Sustainability Section)
  • Dr. Fred Letson, Post Doc, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Dr. Jacob Coburn, Post Doc, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Dr. Jisesh Sethunadh, Post Doc, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (now at KIT)
  • Dr Kelsey Thompson, Post Doc, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Dr. Xin Zhou, Post Doc, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Dr. Jeanie Aird, PhD student, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (now at UTDallas)
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