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

0933414 Gonzalez本研究的主要目标是确定沿海地区的不对称变暖-变冷趋势以及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州沿海地区的不对称变暖。 因此，这项研究已经假设，气候变化的影响在内陆站点在加州增加了夏季白天的水平温度梯度，这增加了强度和频率凉爽的夏季海洋海风流入人口稠密和污染严重的加州沿海平原，这反过来又减少了对电能的需求用于冷却。 为了检验这一假设，独特的热表面梯度将详细研究沿着加州海岸线和平均和峰值电力需求的变化的具体影响将进行调查。 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相关联。 气候分析将与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。 气候分析将用一个中尺度大气模型预测未来（50年以上），该模型将由基于气专委设想情景的全球环流模型的缩小尺度信息驱动。 建模将解决全球变暖（不同的情景）和土地使用变化的相对影响，反映在能源变量（度日，电力和天然气需求峰值）的变化。 该项目是两所少数民族大学（纽约市立大学和圣何塞州立大学）和劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室的联合合作项目。

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.