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Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms on North Sea Stratification
Advances in offshore wind farm (OWF) technology have recently led to their construction in coastal waters that are deep enough to be seasonally stratified. As tidal currents move past the OWF foundation structures they generate a turbulent wake that will contribute to a mixing of the stratified wate...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27513754 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160830 |
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author | Carpenter, Jeffrey R. Merckelbach, Lucas Callies, Ulrich Clark, Suzanna Gaslikova, Lidia Baschek, Burkard |
author_facet | Carpenter, Jeffrey R. Merckelbach, Lucas Callies, Ulrich Clark, Suzanna Gaslikova, Lidia Baschek, Burkard |
author_sort | Carpenter, Jeffrey R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Advances in offshore wind farm (OWF) technology have recently led to their construction in coastal waters that are deep enough to be seasonally stratified. As tidal currents move past the OWF foundation structures they generate a turbulent wake that will contribute to a mixing of the stratified water column. In this study we show that the mixing generated in this way may have a significant impact on the large-scale stratification of the German Bight region of the North Sea. This region is chosen as the focus of this study since the planning of OWFs is particularly widespread. Using a combination of idealised modelling and in situ measurements, we provide order-of-magnitude estimates of two important time scales that are key to understanding the impacts of OWFs: (i) a mixing time scale, describing how long a complete mixing of the stratification takes, and (ii) an advective time scale, quantifying for how long a water parcel is expected to undergo enhanced wind farm mixing. The results are especially sensitive to both the drag coefficient and type of foundation structure, as well as the evolution of the pycnocline under enhanced mixing conditions—both of which are not well known. With these limitations in mind, the results show that OWFs could impact the large-scale stratification, but only when they occupy extensive shelf regions. They are expected to have very little impact on large-scale stratification at the current capacity in the North Sea, but the impact could be significant in future large-scale development scenarios. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4981390 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49813902016-08-29 Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms on North Sea Stratification Carpenter, Jeffrey R. Merckelbach, Lucas Callies, Ulrich Clark, Suzanna Gaslikova, Lidia Baschek, Burkard PLoS One Research Article Advances in offshore wind farm (OWF) technology have recently led to their construction in coastal waters that are deep enough to be seasonally stratified. As tidal currents move past the OWF foundation structures they generate a turbulent wake that will contribute to a mixing of the stratified water column. In this study we show that the mixing generated in this way may have a significant impact on the large-scale stratification of the German Bight region of the North Sea. This region is chosen as the focus of this study since the planning of OWFs is particularly widespread. Using a combination of idealised modelling and in situ measurements, we provide order-of-magnitude estimates of two important time scales that are key to understanding the impacts of OWFs: (i) a mixing time scale, describing how long a complete mixing of the stratification takes, and (ii) an advective time scale, quantifying for how long a water parcel is expected to undergo enhanced wind farm mixing. The results are especially sensitive to both the drag coefficient and type of foundation structure, as well as the evolution of the pycnocline under enhanced mixing conditions—both of which are not well known. With these limitations in mind, the results show that OWFs could impact the large-scale stratification, but only when they occupy extensive shelf regions. They are expected to have very little impact on large-scale stratification at the current capacity in the North Sea, but the impact could be significant in future large-scale development scenarios. Public Library of Science 2016-08-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4981390/ /pubmed/27513754 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160830 Text en © 2016 Carpenter et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Carpenter, Jeffrey R. Merckelbach, Lucas Callies, Ulrich Clark, Suzanna Gaslikova, Lidia Baschek, Burkard Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms on North Sea Stratification |
title | Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms on North Sea Stratification |
title_full | Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms on North Sea Stratification |
title_fullStr | Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms on North Sea Stratification |
title_full_unstemmed | Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms on North Sea Stratification |
title_short | Potential Impacts of Offshore Wind Farms on North Sea Stratification |
title_sort | potential impacts of offshore wind farms on north sea stratification |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27513754 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160830 |
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