We study how climate change will impact extreme winds and choice of turbine class. We use data from 18 CMIP6 members from a historic and a future period to access the change in the extreme winds. The analysis shows an overall increase in the extreme winds in the North Sea and the southern Baltic Sea, but a decrease over the Scandinavian Peninsula and most of the Baltic Sea. The analysis is inconclusive to whether higher or lower classes of turbines will be installed in the future.

Wind turbines extract kinetic energy from the flow to create electricity. This induces a wake of reduced wind speed downstream of a turbine and consequently downstream of a wind farm. Different types of numerical models have been developed to calculate this effect. In this study, we compared models of different complexity, together with measurements over two wind farms. We found that higher-fidelity models perform better and the considered rapid models cannot fully capture the wake effect.

A natural hazard is a naturally occurring extreme event with a negative effect on people, society, or the environment; major events in the study area include wind storms, extreme waves, high and low sea level, ice ridging, heavy precipitation, sea-effect snowfall, river floods, heat waves, ice seasons, and drought. In the future, an increase in sea level, extreme precipitation, heat waves, and phytoplankton blooms is expected, and a decrease in cold spells and severe ice winters is anticipated.

As part of the Baltic Earth Assessment Reports (BEAR), we present an inventory and discussion of different human-induced factors and processes affecting the environment of the Baltic Sea region and their interrelations. Some are naturally occurring and modified by human activities, others are completely human-induced, and they are all interrelated to different degrees. The findings from this study can largely be transferred to other comparable marginal and coastal seas in the world.

Events like mid-latitude storms with their high winds have an impact on wind energy production and forecasting of such events is crucial. This study investigates the capabilities of a global weather prediction model MPAS and looks at how key parameters like storm intensity, arrival time and duration are represented compared to measurements and traditional methods. It is found that storm intensity is represented well while model drifts negatively influence estimation of arrival time and duration.

For the first time, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) calculated from the explicit wake parameterization (EWP) in WRF is examined using high-frequency measurements over a wind farm and compared with that calculated using the Fitch et al. (2012) scheme. We examined the effect of farm-induced TKE advection in connection with the Fitch scheme. Through a case study with a low-level jet (LLJ), we analyzed the key features of LLJs and raised the issue of interaction between wind farms and LLJs.