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Relationship between wind power production and North Atlantic atmospheric circulation over the northeastern Iberian Peninsula

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Abstract

The wind power generated during winter months 1999–2003 at several wind farms in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula is investigated through the application of a statistical downscaling. This allows for an improved understanding of the wind power variability and its relationship to the large scale atmospheric circulation. It is found that 97 % of the variability of this non-climatic variable is connected to changes in the atmospheric circulation. The methodological uncertainty associated with multiple configurations of the statistical downscaling method replicates well the observed variability of the wind power, an indication of the robustness of the methodology to changes in the model set up. In addition, the use of the statistical model is extended out of the observational period providing an estimation of the long-term variability of wind power throughout the twentieth century. The extended wind power reconstruction shows large inter-annual and multidecadal variability. Alternative approaches to calibrate the empirical downscaling model using actual wind power observations have also been investigated. They involve the estimation of wind power changes from downscaled wind values and make use of several transfer functions based on the linearity between wind and wind energy. The performance of the latter approaches is similar to the direct downscaling of wind power and may allow wind power production estimations even in the absence of historical wind turbine records. These results can be of great interest for deriving medium/long term impact-oriented energy assessments, especially when wind power observations are missing as well as in the context of climate change scenarios.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Acciona Energía for facilitating the wind farms dataset and the government of Navarra for providing us with the observations used in this study. We thank the ECMWF for providing the ERA-40 data and the outputs from the operational model used in this research. We are also grateful to the working framework established by the collaboration between CIEMAT and the PalMA group at UCM (Ref. 09/153). Part of the financial support for some of the authors involved in this work was provided by the projects PSE-120000-2007-14 and CGL2011-29677-C02-02. J.L. and E.X. acknowledges support from the EU/FP7 project ACQWA (NO212250). E.G-B and J.L are also supported by the ‘Historical climatology of the Middle East based on Arabic sources back to ad 800’ (LU 1608/2-1 AOBJ 575150). J.L. also acknowledges support by the DFG Projects PRIME 1 and 2 (‘Precipitation in the past millennium in Europe’ and ‘PRecipitation In past Millennia in Europe- extension back to Roman times’, LU1608/1-1, AOBJ: 568460) within the Priority Programme ‘INTERDYNAMIK’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change, Department of Geography, Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Senckenbergstrasse 1, 35390, Giessen, Germany

    E. García-Bustamante, E. Xoplaki & J. Luterbacher

  2. Departamento de Astrofísica y CC. de la Atmósfera, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    J. F. González-Rouco, A. Hidalgo & E. E. Lucio-Eceiza

  3. Departamento de Energías Renovables, CIEMAT, Avenida Complutense s/n, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    J. Navarro & P. A. Jiménez

  4. Departamento de Física, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    J. P. Montávez

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  1. E. García-Bustamante
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  2. J. F. González-Rouco
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  3. J. Navarro
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  8. A. Hidalgo
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  9. E. E. Lucio-Eceiza
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Correspondence to E. García-Bustamante.

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García-Bustamante, E., González-Rouco, J.F., Navarro, J. et al. Relationship between wind power production and North Atlantic atmospheric circulation over the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. Clim Dyn 40, 935–949 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1451-8

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