McCarron, C. and Unsworth, C. and Van Landeghem, K. and Whitehouse, R.J.S. and Bricheno, L. and Rulent, J. (2025) Modelling the combined influence of offshore wind farm infrastructure, sea level rise and climate change. In: TELEMAC User Conference 2025, 15-17 October 2025, Menai Bridge, Wales, UK.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Infrastructure associated with OWFs modify local hydrodynamics and the associated sediment dynamics (i.e. sediment mobility and seabed composition). Alongside the effect of OWF infrastructure, sea level rise (SLR) and climate change will also affect currents and waves in the future. It is unclear how the combined influence of OWF infrastructure, SLR and climate change will impact hydrodynamics and the seabed in shelf sea environments. The Eastern Irish Sea has experienced rapid OWF development with nine existing OWFs and a combined capacity of 2905 MW. Three additional wind farms are proposed under the current leasing round. The Eastern Irish Sea is a data rich environment with observations of currents and waves, and sediment sample data collected during the pre- and post-construction surveys. It has also hosted extensive oceanographic and geophysical research historically. As such, it is an ideal environment in which to assess the combined influence of SLR, climate change, and OWF infrastructure. As part of the NERC ECOWind-ACCELERATE project, fully coupled TELEMAC2D-TOMAWAC-GAIA models were developed to represent past, present-day, and future scenarios of OWF development in the Eastern Irish Sea. For the future scenarios, the tidal forcing applied to the model boundary was extracted from NEMO models of the UK continental shelf (~1.5 km resolution, AMM15 configuration) including UKCP18 RCP8.5 SLR projections. The wave spectra used to force the model boundary were extracted from Wave Watch III models of similar extent and resolution future periods chosen from the HADGEM3 RCP8.5 climate projection dataset. The wind and atmospheric pressure fields associated with these events were applied across the model domain. In the TELEMAC-TOMAWAC-GAIA models, a hybrid bed shear stress method was used to appropriately resolve turbulence generated bed shear stresses in the wakes of the OWF monopiles. The results highlight the effects of existing and proposed OWF infrastructure on tidal currents, bed shear stresses, and sediment transport. SLR acts to decouple bed shear stresses from the bed, but the higher water levels allow more wave energy to propagate further inshore than under present-day conditions. In the vicinity of the OWF developments, the decoupling of bed shear stresses associated with SLR is dominated by the wake-generated bed shear stresses of the monopiles. The wake generated bed shear stresses are enhanced by the increased storm intensity associated with the future climate scenarios.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Full paper not published |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Offshore wind development, bed shear stress, sediment transport, sea level rise, climate change |
| Subjects: | Energy > Marine renewable energy Maritime > General |
| Divisions: | Energy Maritime |
| Depositing User: | Helen Stevenson |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Oct 2025 08:12 |
| Last Modified: | 10 Oct 2025 08:12 |
| URI: | http://eprints.hrwallingford.com/id/eprint/1700 |
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