Climate change blowin' in the wind

Glen Paul: G'day, and welcome to CSIROpod. I'm Glen Paul. Climate change concerns coupled with high oil prices in peak oil has led to further demand for renewable energy such as solar, wind, and tidal. And while these types of renewable energy are naturally replenished, they are of course influenced by the weather, which itself will be impacted by climate change.

There's no doubt the actual effect of climate change on energy operations and infrastructure remains under-researched and potentially serious, which is why a new branch of science is moving to maximise the energy that will drive the wind or ocean turbines, light up the solar farms, or improve weather exposed oil and gas generation.

Joining me on the line is Dr Alberto Troccoli from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. Alberto, this is probably something that isn't thought about a lot, but just how much impact will changing weather patterns potentially have on the energy produced by wind and solar farms?

Dr Troccoli: Yeah, it's not really something that anyone has a good grasp of, and an area that is being looked at more and more, especially because the investments are going up now with the wind and solar, and they are the first few studies that are looking at for example how the wind is changing over long periods of time in various parts of the world, and we are seeing in some parts of the world today a decline like in the US and China, and some mixed decline or increase over Europe, and recently also we published a paper for Australia, where we showed that the wind is actually increasing. So there is a mixed response to wind, depending on how the climate change patterns affect this variable.

Glen Paul: So what can be done to manage that?

Dr Troccoli: What can be done is to be aware that some marked changes can happen. You could have changes as large, or larger, than 10 per cent over the lifetime of wind turbine for example, which is about 20 years, and with the wind changes we're observing 10 per cent is quite likely to happen over that period of time.

So people should start to have a better look at using all sorts of information you can find, other observations or some climate change scenarios – put together all this information, rather than relying, as people have done in the past, on one or two year campaign of observations, very high frequency data, but then it's only for that one or two years, and then especially if they are taken in a year when there's no El Niño for example, and then El Niño comes you get completely different results, and that can really effect the long term yields of a farm.

Glen Paul: So this is obviously requiring some serious modelling. But just how reliable is the climate change science required for that?

Dr Troccoli: Yeah, we have various aspects of climate science. We have the aspects that are to do with the historical observations, and we can do a lot about understanding what things are changing based on these records, but also we have models that complement this information, and help us to fill the gaps of the observations. And then we have again the models that help us to look at the future.

So we have to put all the pictures together and try to see how reliable one piece is versus the other. And normally this is done in a separate way – people either look at the climate change scenario and don’t put too much emphasis on how much uncertainty there is there, and equally on the observations then how much uncertainty there is there, because even observations, they are affected by several factors.

Like for wind instruments for example, you have normal wear and tear, and sometimes you see the wind going down just because the instrument is getting old. And so you may interpret that wind speed decline as a real wind speed, when that was just due to the instrument. So there’s many factors to be taken into account in the analysis of this data.

Glen Paul: And this is also going to impact on traditional energy sources too, such as offshore oil and gas, perhaps more frequent cyclones, or the flooding of coal mines for example. Are they going to get onboard with this research as well?

Dr Troccoli: Well actually this industry, the oil and gas especially, started being involved in this research quite a long time ago. They realised that pretty soon that things like cyclones are affecting operations offshore of oil construction, and gas as well. So what they did, it was actually to employ specialists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and so on, inside the company so that they can provide a service directly to what they're needed for.

And so in a sense they advanced the science there, the research, even if it was applied, but at the same time there was this disconnect created because what they were finding was not published and made available, and they tended to work a bit in isolation from the rest of the scientific community.

But more and more these people wanted to also find out what the scientific community was doing, what the latest findings were in things that were relevant for them, and so people have started to meet, and this now is becoming more and more a need for the industry and for the scientific community as well.

Glen Paul: So what are you doing to ensure that you are getting all the scientific disciplines together to work this through?

Dr Troccoli: Well, we have meetings, conferences, and for the first time this year we'll have an international conference on energy and meteorology, which is meant to bring exactly those two communities together, and to find ways that communities can interact in a better way in the future.

You know, avoiding also issues like commercial issues, and so have a bit more open discussion about things that can be useful for the industry that can be done by the research community and at the same time things that are interesting for the research community to develop that are in line with what is really needed outside.

And so this conference is happening in November on the Gold Coast, and it should start to set the framework for these two communities to speak to each other on a regular basis over say every two years or so. And aside from this there are already several conferences, but they are more specialised, they are the meteorology community, or in the energy community, and so there's always this kind of separation between the two.

Glen Paul: Hmm. And do you want to hear from scientists who might be listening, who are out there working in these areas? Can they get in touch with you?

Dr Troccoli: Well definitely, yes. I mean right now the purposes of the conference we are putting together on the Gold Coast in November is to exactly engage with as many Scientists as possible that are working in the area, that can contribute to make the field grow, and just be part of this very interesting and exciting new area of research.

Glen Paul: So scientists with ideas could just email you?

Dr Troccoli: Oh yes. My email address is my first name, alberto.troccoli@csiro.au.

Glen Paul: OK. Well, I do hope you get some scientific feedback there on what is just another worrying aspect of climate change – another to add to the growing list. Thanks for discussing it with us, Alberto.

Dr Troccoli: Thank you very much, Glen.

Glen Paul: Dr Alberto Troccoli. For more information find us online at www.csiro.au. You can like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter at CSIROnews.