Investigating the Impact of Sea Waves on Offshore Wind Simulation: A Study Using the WRF Model

Previous studies showed that interaction between the atmosphere and sea is very important for simulating offshore wind, due to the effects of sea waves on momentum, mass and energy exchanges. In numerical weather prediction models, this effect is typically represented by a parameter known as roughness length. However, many atmospheric models do not take into account the impact of waves on roughness length over the sea.

In this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of waves on offshore wind simulation by applying some new roughness length formula in Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) to consider wave characteristics in roughness length calculation. The simulations were compared with observations during some cases of misalignment and alignment of wind and wave directions at FINO1 station. We compared wind speed and wind power density of the simulated and observed data using met mast and lidar data.