Modelling sea breeze climatologies and interactions on coasts in the southern North Sea: Implications for offshore wind energy

Steele, Christopher, Dorling, Stephen, von Glasow, Roland and Bacon, Jim (2015) Modelling sea breeze climatologies and interactions on coasts in the southern North Sea: Implications for offshore wind energy. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 141 (690). 1821–1835. ISSN 0035-9009

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Abstract

Current understanding of the behaviour of sea breezes in the offshore environment is limited but rapidly requires improvement due, not least, to the expansion of the offshore wind energy industry. Here we report on contrasting characteristics of three sea-breeze types on five coastlines around the southern North Sea from an 11 year model-simulated climatology. We present and test an identification method which distinguishes sea-breeze types which can, in principle, be adapted for other coastlines around the world. The coherence of the composite results for each type demonstrates that the method is very effective in resolving and distinguishing characteristics and features. Some features, such as jets and calm zones, are shown to influence offshore wind farm development areas, including the sites of the proposed wind farms up to 200 km offshore. A large variability in sea-breeze frequency between neighbouring coastlines of up to a factor of 3 is revealed. Additionally, there is a strong association between sea-breeze type on one coastline and that which may form coincidentally on another nearby. This association can be as high as 86% between, for example, the North Norfolk and East Norfolk coasts. We show, through associations between sea-breeze events on coastlines with contrasting orientations, that each coastline can be important for influencing the wind climate of another. Furthermore, we highlight that each sea-breeze type needs separate consideration in wind power resource assessment and that future larger turbines will be more sensitive to sea-breeze impacts.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2014 The Authors. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of the Royal Meteorological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sea breeze types,wrf,offshore wind energy,marine weather forecasting,southern north sea,coastal jets,sdg 13 - climate action,sdg 14 - life below water ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	04 Nov 2014 12:36
Last Modified:	20 Mar 2023 12:37
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/50685
DOI:	10.1002/qj.2484

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