We suggest a model configuration to predict offshore wind speed and wind power density in the Northeast US. We focused on wind droughts, long periods of low wind speed that affect the reliability of wind power generation. We show that wind prediction depends primarily on the initial and boundary conditions, and that it is important to evaluate the connection of wind speed to wind power generation, to select the best model configuration.

The Mesoscale to Microscale Coupling team, part of the U.S. Department of Energy Atmosphere to Electrons (A2e) initiative, has studied various important challenges related to coupling mesoscale models to microscale models. Lessons learned and discerned best practices are described in the context of the cases studied for the purpose of enabling further deployment of wind energy. It also points to code, assessment tools, and data for testing the methods.

This study uses in situ aircraft measurements to characterize the size and shape distributions of 10 µm to 6 mm diameter particles observed during six penetrations of wildfire-induced pyroconvection. Particles sampled in one penetration of a smoke plume are most likely pyrometeors composed of ash. The other penetrations are through pyrocumulus clouds where particle composition is most likely a combination of hydrometeors (ice particles) and pyrometeors (ash).

Wind energy will play a central role in the transition of our energy system to a carbon-free future. However, many underlying scientific issues remain to be resolved before wind can be deployed in the locations and applications needed for such large-scale ambitions. The Grand Challenges are the gaps in the science left behind during the rapid growth of wind energy. This article explains the breadth of the unfinished business and introduces 10 articles that detail the research needs.

Numerical weather prediction models are used to predict how wind turbines will interact with the atmosphere. Here, we characterize the uncertainty associated with the choice of turbulence parameterization on modeled wakes. We find that simulated wind speed deficits in turbine wakes can be significantly sensitive to the choice of turbulence parameterization. As such, predictions of future generated power are also sensitive to turbulence parameterization choice.

Application of 1-D lake models coupled within earth-system prediction models will improve accuracy but requires accurate initialization of lake temperatures. Here, we describe a lake initialization method by cycling within a weather prediction model to constrain lake temperature evolution. We compared these lake temperature values with other estimates and found much reduced errors (down to 1-2 K). The lake cycling initialization is now applied to two operational US NOAA weather models.

Wildfire smoke has crucial impacts on air quality, while uncertainties in the numerical forecasts remain significant. We present an evaluation of 12 real-time forecasting systems. Comparison of predicted smoke emissions suggests a large spread in magnitudes, with temporal patterns deviating from satellite detections. The performance for AOD and surface PM_2.5 and their discrepancies highlighted the role of accurately represented spatiotemporal emission profiles in improving smoke forecasts.

We investigate the ability of a community-open weather model to simulate the turbulent atmosphere by comparison with measurements from a 250 m mast at a flat site in Denmark. We found that within three main atmospheric stability regimes, idealized simulations reproduce closely the characteristics of the observations with regards to the mean wind, direction, turbulent fluxes, and turbulence spectra. Our work provides foundation for the use of the weather model in multiscale real-time simulations.

The idea that larger shallow cumulus clouds have stronger updrafts than small shallow cumulus clouds is as intuitive as it is old. In this paper we gather years of upward-pointing laser measurements from a plain in Oklahoma and combine them with 28 d of high-resolution simulations. Our approach, which has much more data than previous studies, confirms that updraft strength and cloud size are linked and that the simulations reproduce the observed cloud wind and moisture structure.