Impact of Climate Change on Offshore Wind Energy Potential over the Arabian Sea using CMIP6 Future Projection.

Over the past fifty years, the Indian Ocean has experienced a pervasive warming trend, prompting investigations into the causative factors and consequential impacts at a basin-wide scale. Research analyzing sea surface temperature (SST) suggests that the western Indian Ocean has been undergoing warming for more than a century. The increase in SST has triggered a range of effects, including alterations in surface pressure distribution, resulting in variable wind patterns, sea-level rise, and other associated outcomes. Understanding the variability in wind speed holds practical significance, including estimating wind power potential for specific geographic regions and developing future projections for wind wave climates to aid in the planning of coastal activities and coastal zone management. The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a pivotal role in disseminating comprehensive insights into the past, present, and future trajectories of climate change for the scientific community. The CMIP6 project, introduces a spectrum of shared socio-economic pathways (SSP) projecting radiative forcing values ranging from 1.9 to 8.5 W/m² by the end of the century. For a comprehensive understanding of future climate projections, a thorough evaluation and skill assessment of General Circulation Models (GCMs) within the CMIP6 project, specifically regarding their ability to simulate wind speed, is imperative. In this study, BCC-CSM2-MR model has been leveraged to project future changes in the offshore wind energy potential over the Arabian sea. The projections of wind speed at a height of 50 meters using the BCC-CSM2-MR, on the Arabian Sea within a span of three distinct periods: Near-future (2026-2050), Mid-future (2051- 60 2075), and Far-future (2076-2100) and for two distinct Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP) scenarios, namely SSP1-2.6 and SSP3-7.0, have been estimated in this study. The overall trend indicates that wind speed over the Arabian Sea remains relatively constant, showing no significant changes. However, a subtle increase is discernible on the western side of the Arabian Sea, particularly near the Oman coast, evident in the SSP3-7.0 scenario. The Projected change in the wind power density (WPD) for the three distinct period change are evaluated keeping the historical wind data from 1990-2014 as a reference. The WPD is increasing by 10% over the Arabian sea for SSP1-2.6 for near-future (2026- 2050), 8% for mid-future (2051-2075) and 6% for far-future (2076-2100) with respect to historical wind speed (1990-2014). But for SSP3-7.0 the wind speed is showing a decline of 2%to 4 % from near-future to far-future. Correspondingly, wind power density exhibited spatial changes over the Arabian Sea, with the western side showing an increase under SSP1-2.6 and a decrease under SSP3-7.0

Keywords: Wind Speed, Wind Power Density, CMIP6, Arabian Sea, Offshore Wind Energy, Climate Change.