Description:

In recent years, there has been rapidly increasing interest in the siting, buildout, and efficient operation of offshore wind plants, as required to meet domestic renewable energy targets, i.e., 35% of the nation's electricity demands by 2050, of which 110 GW are expected to be deployed offshore.  With a recent push to deploy 30 GW by 2030 and accelerating investments in offshore wind turbines, quantifying the uncertainty in wind resource characterization is a top priority of the US DOE offshore wind strategy.  Along the US East Coast, several wind farms (e.g., Vineyard Wind) are planned to begin construction by 2023.  With the US DOE-funded Wind Forecasting Improvement Project Phase 3 (WFIP3) field campaign expected to begin in 2024 near the East Coast wind energy lease areas, addressing some of the current challenges in offshore wind resource assessment and forecasting would aid in improved field campaign design.  Along the US West Coast, the impact of atmospheric and oceanographic conditions on floating offshore wind turbines is largely unknown.  The accuracy of existing high-resolution coupled models in estimating the wind resource is questionable due to the complex wind-wave-terrain interactions, shallow offshore boundary layers, stratocumulus clouds etc.

In this session we would engage topics focusing on challenges in offshore wind resource assessment and forecasting.  Specifically, we would encourage papers on observationally driven resource assessment, air-sea interactions, wind-wave-ocean coupled modeling, seasonal to sub-seasonal variability, uncertainty quantification, improving weather forecasting error, novel parameterization schemes, extreme event forecasting and assessment (e.g., hurricanes, extratropical cyclones) , impacts of topographic flows and low-level jets, assessment needs of floating offshore wind turbines, cloud-driven boundary layer turbulence, and modeling or observing offshore precipitation/icing/hail effects on wind turbine blades.