Analysis 02: OWF Effect on the Ocean - On the Effect of Offshore Wind Farms on the Atmosphere and Ocean Dynamics - page 49

Chapter 5
Analysis 02: OWF Effect on the Ocean

The possible effects of a wind farm on the atmosphere, especially on the atmo-
spheric wind field, are summarized in the previous chapter. Based on the fact that
wind farms will be heightened construct on the ocean, an analysis on how a changed
wind field will affect the ocean

s dynamics is of special interest in this context. At
this juncture, different aspects are focused on.
Foremost, a common description of the impact on the ocean is given in subitem
Sect. 5.1 , introducing provoked changes in ocean dynamics and hydrography.
Furthermore, a physical analysis explains and derives occurring changes in Sect. 5.2 .
Section 5.3 refers to different METRAS simulations for different wind speeds, amount
of wind turbines, consistency of effect, and investigations regarding computational
assumptions of ocean simulations, like forcing, depth of model area, and horizontal
resolution, to fully capture all sides of the appearing phenomenon. Although HAMSOM
is well verified over the years, the results are compared to measurements in Sect. 5.4 to
estimate the dimension of OWFs

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impact on the ocean and to evaluate the model data.
The main variables that are analyzed here are hydrodynamic and hydrological
properties. Simulations are based on TOS-01 (box model, Sect. 3.3 ) with a mostly
adopted geostrophic flow of 8 m/s; otherwise, then it is explicitly alluded to.
To point out the OWF effect on the ocean, the results are primarily presented by
differences between a run with operating wind farm (OWFr) and a run without wind
farm, the reference run (REFr). This dodge reflects the clear effect of OWFs
because all changes in the dynamics do not occur in REFr.

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5.1 Common Description of the Impact on the Ocean

The presentation of this section is based on the data of simulation T012ug08
TS01HD60F01 to primarily detect OWFs

effect on the ocean. Here, it is assumed
that the change of the wind field is the major effect of the wind farm on the ocean.

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