Urban wind resource assessment in changing climate: Case study

Urban wind resource assessment in changing climate has not been studied so far. This study presents a methodology for microscale numerical modelling of urban wind resource assessment in changing climate. The methodology is applied for a specific urban development in the city of Toronto, ON, Canada. It is shown that the speed of the southwest winds, that is, the most frequent winds increased for.8 m s−1 in the period from 1948 to 2015. The generated wind energy maps are used to estimate the influences of climate change on the available wind energy. It is shown that the geometry of irregularly spaced and located obstacles in urban environments has to be taken into consideration when performing studies on urban wind resource assessment in changing climate. In the analysed urban environment, peak speeds are more affected by climate change than the mean speeds. © 2016, © The Author(s) 2016.