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This is the second of two papers that document the creation of the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA). In Part 1, we described the sensitivity experiments and accompanying evaluation done to arrive at the final mesoscale model setup used to produce the mesoscale wind atlas. In this paper, Part 2, we document how we made the final wind atlas product, covering both the production of the mesoscale climatology generated with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the microscale climatology generated with the Wind Atlas Analysis and Applications Program (WAsP). The paper includes a detailed description of the technical and practical aspects that went into running the mesoscale simulations and the downscaling using WAsP. We show the main results from the final wind atlas and present a comprehensive evaluation of each component of the NEWA model chain using observations from a large set of tall masts located all over Europe. The added value of the WRF and WAsP downscaling of wind climatologies is evaluated relative to the performance of the driving ERA5 reanalysis and shows that the WRF downscaling reduces the mean wind speed bias and spread relative to that of ERA5 from -1.50±1.30 to 0.02±0.78 m s−1. The WAsP downscaling has an added positive impact relative to that of the WRF model in simple terrain. In complex terrain, where the assumptions of the linearized flow model break down, both the mean bias and spread in wind speed are worse than those from the raw mesoscale results.

This is the first of two papers that document the creation of the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA). It describes the sensitivity analysis and evaluation procedures that formed the basis for choosing the final setup of the mesoscale model simulations of the wind atlas. The suitable combination of model setup and parameterizations, bound by practical constraints, was found for simulating the climatology of the wind field at turbine-relevant heights with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Initial WRF model sensitivity experiments compared the wind climate generated by using two commonly used planetary boundary layer schemes and were carried out over several regions in Europe. They confirmed that the most significant differences in annual mean wind speed at 100 m a.g.l. (above ground level) mostly coincide with areas of high surface roughness length and not with the location of the domains or maximum wind speed. Then an ensemble of more than 50 simulations with different setups for a single year was carried out for one domain covering northern Europe for which tall mast observations were available. We varied many different parameters across the simulations, e.g. model version, forcing data, various physical parameterizations, and the size of the model domain. These simulations showed that although virtually every parameter change affects the results in some way, significant changes in the wind climate in the boundary layer are mostly due to using different physical parameterizations, especially the planetary boundary layer scheme, the representation of the land surface, and the prescribed surface roughness length. Also, the setup of the simulations, such as the integration length and the domain size, can considerably influence the results. We assessed the degree of similarity between winds simulated by the WRF ensemble members and the observations using a suite of metrics, including the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD), a statistic that measures the distance

This is the second of two papers that document the creation of the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA). In Part 1, we described the sensitivity experiments and accompanying evaluation done to arrive at the final mesoscale model setup used to produce the mesoscale wind atlas. In this paper, Part 2, we document how we made the final wind atlas product, covering both the production of the mesoscale climatology generated with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the microscale climatology generated with the Wind Atlas Analysis and Applications Program (WAsP). The paper includes a detailed description of the technical and practical aspects that went into running the mesoscale simulations and the downscaling using WAsP. We show the main results from the final wind atlas and present a comprehensive evaluation of each component of the NEWA model chain using observations from a large set of tall masts located all over Europe. The added value of the WRF and WAsP downscaling of wind climatologies is evaluated relative to the performance of the driving ERA5 reanalysis and shows that the WRF downscaling reduces the mean wind speed bias and spread relative to that of ERA5 from −1.50±1.30 to 0.02±0.78 m s−1. The WAsP downscaling has an added positive impact relative to that of the WRF model in simple terrain. In complex terrain, where the assumptions of the linearized flow model break down, both the mean bias and spread in wind speed are worse than those from the raw mesoscale results., The European Commission (EC) partly funded NEWA (NEWA – New European Wind Atlas) through FP7 (topic FP7-ENERGY.2013.10.1.2). The authors of this paper acknowledge the support from the Federal Ministry for the Economic Affairs and Energy, on the basis of the decision by the German Bundestag (grant no. 0325832A/B); the Danish Energy Authority (EUDP 14-II, 64014-0590); Latvijas Zinatnu Akademija (Latvia – grant no. Z/16/1397); the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain; grant nos. PCIN-2014-017-C07-03, PCIN-2016-176, PCIN-2014-017-C07-04, PCIN-2016-009, PCIN-2014-013-C07-04, and PCIN-2016-080); the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (grant no. 215M386). Mariano Sastre-Marugán additionally acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte through the “José Castillejo” Fellowship (grant no. CAS18/00316)., Peer Reviewed, "Article signat per 18 autors/es: Martin Dörenkämper, Bjarke T. Olsen, Björn Witha, Andrea N. Hahmann, Neil N. Davis, Jordi Barcons, Yasemin Ezber, Elena García-Bustamante, J. Fidel González-Rouco, Jorge Navarro, Mariano Sastre-Marugán, Tija Sīle, Wilke Trei, Mark Žagar, Jake Badger, Julia Gottschall, Javier Sanz Rodrigo, and Jakob Mann ", Postprint (published version)

The New European Wind Atlas (NEWA), the largest European project on wind resource assessment technology, has developed mesoscale-to-microscale wind atlas and site assessment methodologies alongside a validation strategy that leverages data from large field experiments as well as wind resource campaigns from industry through a formal verification and validation process. A probabilistic wind atlas approach, based on a multi-physics ensemble, provides means to quantify the uncertainty associated to the mesoscale configuration. Offline meso-micro coupling has been adopted to provide a modular approach for microscale models of different fidelities to share common mesoscale input data. An open-source model chain based on WRF and OpenFOAM codes has been released as reference for future model development and validation activities in connection to wind assessment best practices and standards.

This report describes the sensitivity studies performed with the mesoscale model WRF in preparation of the mesoscale wind atlas production runs. The objective of this work was to find a modelsetup that is not just a best practice setup but well-founded and based on scientific evaluation. We started with performing some initial sensitivity experiments changing the PBL scheme and the initialisation of the model. The work was distributed among several partners, each conducting the same set of experiments but on a different domain. The objective of this first phase was to ensure that everybody speaks the same language in terms of applying WRF in the context of NEWA. The results were analysed and compared in terms of the mean wind climate. To draw conclusions regarding the quality of the experiments, the results of one domain were compared to tall mast observations. Overall the model showed a good performance with slightly better results for one of the two tested PBL schemes (MYNN) and weekly initialisation of simulations(compared to daily). In the next phase, further sensitivity tests were conducted for one of the previously defined domains, varying a multitude of parameters as e.g. model version, vertical resolution, forcing data and land surface parameterisation. These studies showed that virtually each parameter change is affecting the results in some way, while significant effects on the wind climate are mostly obtained by changes in physical parameterisation e.g. PBL scheme, representation of the land surface and surface roughness. However, also non-physical parameters as the simulation length and the domain size affects the results considerably. The results suggest to use rather small do-mains and not too long simulations (in the order of 1–2 weeks). One of the objectives of NEWA is to create a probabilistic wind atlas, i.e. to provide uncertainty information to the mesoscale wind atlas (see Deliverables D3.1 and D4.4). This will be achi

As a part of the New European Wind Atlas project, we investigate the estimation of extreme winds from mesoscale simulations. In order to take the smoothing effect of the simulations into account, a spectral correction method is applied to the data. We show that the corrected extreme wind estimates are close to the values obtained from offshore met masts. Hence, after further investigations we plan to use the examined approach as a basis for the calculation of extreme winds on the complete New European Wind Atlas, which will be publicly available at the end of the project.

A new ensemble method is explored for estimating the uncertainty of the wind resource within Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations. The output of the ensemble simulations is processed to create a "map" showing the uncertainty in the wind resource estimate at each geographic location. This new method is demonstrated by performing a collection of 9 different WRF model simulations using combinations of 3 planetary boundary layer schemes, 2 simulation re-initialization strategies, and 2 methods for initializing the land surface state. The results of the simulations are validated against data from 10 meteorological masts in South Africa, part of the Wind Atlas of South Africa (WASA) project, where a long-term set of high-quality observations exist. The results of the ensemble simulations are encouraging, but further analysis is needed to quantify their utility. A key disadvantage of the ensemble simulation strategy employed herein, is that some members may tend to be highly similar to others, leading to overconfidence in the mean and spread of the simulations. Such overconfidence yields misleading estimates of the accuracy, value, and uncertainty of the wind resource.