Understanding Impacts of Climate Change on Energy Infrastructure in Urbanized Coastal Area

本研究的主要目的是确定沿海地区不对称的变暖-变冷趋势及其对能源需求的相关影响。最近的观测研究结果表明，全球尺度气候模型或分析没有捕捉到加利福尼亚沿海地区的不对称变暖。因此，本研究假设，气候变化对加州内陆地区的影响增加了夏季白天的水平温度梯度，这增加了夏季凉爽的海洋海风流入人口稠密和污染严重的加州沿海平原的强度和频率，从而减少了用于冷却的电能需求。为了验证这一假设，将沿着加利福尼亚海岸线详细研究独特的热表面梯度，并研究对平均和峰值电力需求变化的具体影响。该方法将调查气候度日（加热和冷却）和热浪（频率和严重程度）的变化，并将这些变化与地形、海风模式、城市中心和距离海岸的距离联系起来。气候分析将与来自该州电力和天然气公用事业的现有能源需求信息相关联，以确定空间和时间趋势。气候分析将利用一个中尺度大气模式预估未来（50年以上），该模式将由基于IPCC情景的全球环流模式的降尺度信息驱动。该模型将处理全球变暖（不同情景）和土地利用变化的相对影响，这反映在能源变量的变化中（度日度、峰值电力和天然气需求）。该项目是两所少数民族大学（CCNY和圣何塞州立大学）和劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室的联合合作。

0933414GonzalezThe main objective of this research is to identify asymmetric warming-cooling trends in coastal areas and the associated impacts on energy demands. Recent results of observational studies have suggested an asymmetric warming in coastal California not captured by global scale climate models or analyses. As a consequence, for this research it has been hypothesized that climate change impacts at inland sites in California have increased summer daytime horizontal temperature gradients, which have increased the strength and frequency of cool summer marine sea-breeze flows into heavily populated and highly polluted California coastal plains, which in turn decrease the demand for electrical energy for cooling. To test this hypothesis, the unique thermal surface gradient will be studied in detail along California coastlines and the specific implications for changes in average and peak electricity demands will be investigated. The approach will be to investigate the changes in both climatological degree days (for both heating and cooling) and in heat waves (in terms of frequency and severity), and to correlate these changes with topography, sea breeze patterns, urban centers, and distance from the coast. The climatological analysis will be correlated with existing energy demand information from electric and gas utilities in the state to determine spatial and temporal trends. The climatological analyses will be projected into the future (50+ years) with a mesoscale atmospheric model, which will be driven by downscaled information from Global Circulation Models based on IPCC scenarios. The modeling will address the relative effects of global warming (different scenarios) and land use changes, as reflected in changes of energy variables (degree days, peak electricity and gas demands). The project is a joint collaboration of two minority serving universities (CCNY and San Jose State University) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.