The Impacts of Chinese Wind Farms on Climate

As a renewable energy resource, wind energy has developed fast in recent years, and its impacts on climate have received widespread attention. In this study, a new wind farm fleet scenario is designed based on Chinese wind farm data from the Chinese Wind Energy Association and Chinese cumulative wind power capacity data from the Global Wind Energy Council. A mesoscale numerical model is used to simulate the impacts of wind farms on climate. The results indicate that the wind farms in the designed scenario could impact the local and regional climate in China, causing changes in both lower-level atmosphere (changes within 0.5K for 2-m temperature) and upper-level atmosphere (changes within 30m(2)/s(2) for 500-hPa geopotential height) over several specific areas. The momentum sink and the turbulent kinetic energy source generated by wind farms are first separated to evaluate their respective contributions to the impacts of wind farms on climate. Plain Language Summary With the rapid development of wind energy, the impacts of wind farms on environment have attracted increasing attention. A new wind farm fleet scenario is designed in the study to analyze the climatic impacts of wind farms in China. The results show the local and regional climatic impacts of wind farms in China (e.g., changes within 0.5K for 2-m temperature and 30m(2)/s(2) for 500-hPa geopotential height), which are much smaller than the interannual climate variability. This research can provide China, as well as other countries and regions, with useful scientific advice for the environment-friendly development of wind energy.