Present and future regional scale climate influences on renewable energy resources

 

PhD Candidate: João Correia                              

Supervisors: Professor Frank McDermott (UCD), Dr Conor Sweeney (UCD), Professor Mark O’Malley (UCD)

Funded by: Science Foundation Ireland through the Energy Systems Integration Partnership Programme (ESIPP)

Abstract:

This PhD project will investigate how the present-day distribution and intermittency characteristics of renewable energy resources (e.g. wind and solar energy) may be modified by projected climate change on multi-decadal timescales with a view to informing energy systems integration planning decisions.  Climate model outputs (downscaled as appropriate) will be investigated to understand how the critical characteristics of renewable energy resources are likely to change spatially and temporally on regional to global scales, with a focus on Europe.  The project will also investigate the extent to which pre-cursor climate-system conditions on seasonal timescales, inferred from satellite-based observations of the cryosphere, oceans and atmosphere may influence the persistence of selected large scale atmospheric teleconnections such as the North Atlantic and East Atlantic Oscillation during the boreal winter. A secondary aim of the project is to investigate if intra-seasonal NAO prediction skills can be improved using both statistical and dynamical approaches (Scaife et al., 2014) to investigate observed precursor conditions associated with extreme NAO states, including possible links to N. Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, sea surface temperatures, sea ice and ENSO

References:

Scaife, A. A., et al. (2014), Skillful long range prediction of European and North American winters, Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, 2514–2519, doi:10.1002/2014GL059637