Temporal variability of wind power in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea

In this study, we investigated the spatiotemporal characteristics and variability of Mediterranean and Black Sea wind power. As the data source, ERA5 1-hourly dataset from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is used in between the years of 1959 and 2020 and for 100-m altitude. The statistical analysis of the 62-year long time-series covered the investigation of several timescales of hourly, sub-daily, daily, monthly, seasonal, and yearly averaged values. The average values are spatially mapped for yearly and seasonal timescales. The study area has been divided into thirteen subsections to uncover the differences between the statistical parameters of the sub-basins. It is shown that in terms of wind power potential, two of the most energetic locations in the study area is Gulf of Lion and the Aegean Sea. The temporal average wind power density (WPD) map showed that the spatial maximum of the WPD reaches over 1100 W/m² in the Gulf of Lion where the spatial average of the temporal average is over 370 W/m². Several well-known indicators of variability have been used, such as yearly variability index, intra-annual variability index, and coefficient of variation to quantify the fluctuations. It is shown that in general, higher temporal variability has been obtained in the Eastern Black Sea, Eastern Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Sea of Azov for yearly and monthly timescales. A trend analysis based on over six-decade time-series showed that statistically significant downward trends are found in the Levantine Basin, Tunisian Plateau, and the Ionian Basin. Another important feature of the study is that WPD in the study area is also classified according the two spatial properties: water depth and the distance to the shoreline. A general conclusion of this investigation is that WPD increases with the distance to the shoreline where the most promising sub-sections with the highest potential within the first 25 km distance and up to 60 m water depth are the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Acknowledgement: This research is supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) under grant number 122M279, and Tahsin Görmüş is also supported by TÜBİTAK 2211 PhD scholarship programme.

Keywords: wind power, temporal variability, Mediterranean, Black Sea