The nearshore wind and wave energy potential of Ireland: A high resolution assessment of availability and accessibility

Gallagher, Sarah; Tiron, Raluca; Whelan, Eoin; Gleeson, Emily; Dias, Frédéric; McGrath, Ray

doi:10.1016/j.renene.2015.11.010

Cited by 95 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…These projected changes in SWH may consequently reduce the amount of wave power available for exploitation for any future deployments of WECs. However, as was shown in Gallagher et al (2016a), Ireland possesses a large and energetic wave energy resource, particularly off the west coast, and this reduction is expected to have a minimal impact on the overall potential for ocean renewable energy extraction in Ireland.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…The west coast consists of an energetic and variable wind and wave climate which consequently has a large potential for renewable energy extraction (Gallagher et al, 2016a), and is a promising location for the deployment of future Wave Energy Converters (WECs). Ireland is also regularly in the path of energetic swells and midlatitude cyclones, a concern for public safety in the coastal and marine environment, and the viability of any potential WECs deployment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Twenty-first century wave climate projections for Ireland and surface winds in the North Atlantic Ocean

Gallagher

Gleeson

Tiron³

et al. 2016

Adv. Sci. Res.

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Abstract. Ireland has a highly energetic wave and wind climate, and is therefore uniquely placed in terms of its ocean renewable energy resource. The socio-economic importance of the marine resource to Ireland makes it critical to quantify how the wave and wind climate may change in the future due to global climate change. Projected changes in winds, ocean waves and the frequency and severity of extreme weather events should be carefully assessed for long-term marine and coastal planning. We derived an ensemble of future wave climate projections for Ireland using the EC-Earth global climate model and the WAVEWATCH III ® wave model, by comparing the future 30-year period 2070-2099 to the period 1980-2009 for the RCP4.5 and the RCP8.5 forcing scenarios. This dataset is currently the highest resolution wave projection dataset available for Ireland. The ECEarth ensemble predicts decreases in mean (up to 2 % for RCP4.5 and up to 3.5 % for RCP8.5) 10 m wind speeds over the North Atlantic Ocean (5-75 • N, 0-80 • W) by the end of the century, which will consequently affect swell generation for the Irish wave climate. The WAVEWATCH III ® model predicts an overall decrease in annual and seasonal mean significant wave heights around Ireland, with the largest decreases in summer (up to 15 %) and winter (up to 10 %) for RCP8.5. Projected decreases in mean significant wave heights for spring and autumn were found to be small for both forcing scenarios (less than 5 %), with no significant decrease found for RCP4.5 off the west coast in those seasons.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twenty-first century wave climate projections for Ireland and surface winds in the North Atlantic Ocean

Gallagher

Gleeson

Tiron³

et al. 2016

Adv. Sci. Res.

Self Cite

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“…The Northeast Atlantic possesses an energetic and variable wind and wave climate which has a large potential for renewable energy extraction; for example along the western seaboards off Ireland as discussed in Gallagher et al (2013Gallagher et al ( , 2016c and Atan et al (2016). The role of surface winds in the generation of ocean waves means that global atmospheric circulation patterns and wave climate characteristics are inherently connected.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

NAO and extreme ocean states in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Large scale atmospheric oscillations are known to have an influence on waves in the North Atlantic. In quantifying how the wave and wind climate of this region may change towards the end of the century due to climate change, it is useful to investigate the influence of large scale oscillations using indices such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO: fluctuations in the difference between the Icelandic low pressure system and the Azore high pressure system). In this study a statistical analysis of the station-based NAO index was carried out using an ensemble of EC-Earth global climate simulations, where EC-Earth is a European-developed atmosphere ocean sea-ice coupled climate model. The NAO index was compared to observations and to projected changes in the index by the end of the century under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 forcing scenarios. In addition, an ensemble of EC-Earth driven WAVEWATCH III wave model projections over the North Atlantic was analysed to determine the correlations between the NAO and significant wave height (H s ) and the NAO and extreme ocean states. For the most part, no statistically significant differences were found between the distributions of observed and modelled station-based NAO or in projected distributions of the NAO.Means and extremes of H s are projected to decrease on average by the end of this century. The 95th percentile of H s is strongly positively correlated to the NAO. Projections of H s extremes are location dependent and in fact, under the influence of positive NAO the 20-year return levels of H s were found to be amplified in some regions. However, it is important to note that the projected decreases in the 95th percentile of H s off the west coast of Ireland are not statistically significant in one of the RCP4.5 and one of the RCP8.5 simulations (me41, me83) which indicates that there is still uncertainty in the projections of higher percentiles.

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“…Global climate simulations have been successfully downscaled using a downscaling factor of 17 (Hollweg et al, 2008). In addition, recent projects to produce an extreme wind climatology for The Netherlands (Burgers et al, 2013) and a wind/wave climatology for Ireland (Gallagher et al, 2016) using ERA-Interim and HARMONIE-AROME have shown that the approach taken in this study, i.e. nesting HARMONIE-AROME directly with ERA-Interim LBCs, is effective.…”

Section: Simulation Detailsmentioning

confidence: 79%

Met Éireann high resolution reanalysis for Ireland

Gleeson¹,

Whelan²,

Hanley³

2017

Adv. Sci. Res.

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Abstract. The Irish Meteorological Service, Met Éireann, has carried out a 35-year very high resolution (2.5 km horizontal grid) regional climate reanalysis for Ireland using the ALADIN-HIRLAM numerical weather prediction system. This article provides an overview of the reanalysis, called MÉRA, as well as a preliminary analysis of surface parameters including screen level temperature, 10 m wind speeds, mean sea-level pressure (MSLP), soil temperatures, soil moisture and 24 h rainfall accumulations. The quality of the 3-D variational data assimilation used in the reanalysis is also assessed. Preliminary analysis shows that it takes almost 12 months to spin up the deep soil in terms of moisture, justifying the choice of running year-long spin up periods. Overall, the model performed consistently over the time period. Small biases were found in screen-level temperatures (less than −0.5 • C), MSLP (within 0.5 hPa) and 10 m wind speed (up to 0.5 m s −1 ) Soil temperatures are well represented by the model. 24 h accumulations of precipitation generally exhibit a small positive bias of ∼ 1 mm per day and negative biases over mountains due to a mismatch between the model orography and the geography of the region. MÉRA outperforms the ERA-Interim reanalysis, particularly in terms of standard deviations in screen-level temperatures and surface winds. This dataset is the first of its kind for Ireland that will be made publically available during spring 2017.

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The nearshore wind and wave energy potential of Ireland: A high resolution assessment of availability and accessibility

Cited by 95 publications

References 30 publications

Twenty-first century wave climate projections for Ireland and surface winds in the North Atlantic Ocean

Twenty-first century wave climate projections for Ireland and surface winds in the North Atlantic Ocean

NAO and extreme ocean states in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean

Met Éireann high resolution reanalysis for Ireland

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